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WILLIAM PENN 




WILLIAM PENN. 



WILLIAM PENN 

AS THE FOUNDER OF 
TWO COMMONWEALTHS 



BY 



AUGUSTUS C. BUELL 

AUTHOR Of SIR WII.I.IAJI JOHNSON 
PAUL JONES, FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN NAVY, ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

MCMIV 



f' 



kI- 



\v-\- 



LIBRARY ot CONGRESS 
Tw* C»pie8 Received 

FEB 9 1904 

1 

•» Copyright Entry 
CLASS «• XXo, No. 
fOPY 8 



/efo — 



CorrRiGHT. 1304, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Published, February, 1004 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

1644-1660 

PAGE 

The Environment of his Youth 1 



CHAPTER II 

1660-1662 

Under the Restoration , . 37 

CHAPTER III 

1661-1670 

Under his Father's Displeasure 51 

CHAPTER IV 

1668-1678 
Quaker Preacher and Founder of West Jersey . . 81 

CHAPTER V 

1680 

The Pennsylvania Charter 105 

CHAPTER VI 

1681-1684 
Penn's First Year in Pennsylvania . ^ - . . 129 

V 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VII 
1684-1686 

PAGE 

At thk Court of JAxMEs II. 173 

CHAPTER VIII 

1688-1694 

Under William of Orange 197 

CHAPTER IX 

1684-1694 

Pennsylvania in Penn's Absence 217 

CHAPTER X 

1699-1701 

Penn, with Logan, Returns to his Province . . . 237 

CHAPTER XI 

1702-1715 

Government by Correspondence ...... 261 

CHAPTER XII 

1702-1712 

Penn's Last Day's and his Letters to Logan . . . 293 

CHAPTER XIII 

1717-1776 

Pennsylvania under Penn's Descendants .... 345 



VI 



LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE y 
William Penn Frontispiece 

Adraii-al Sir William Penn 6 '^ 

George Pox 18 ^'^ 

The Swedes' church and Sven Sener's house . . . . , 114 

Treaty Tree and Fairman's mansion 114 

Caves used by early settlers 120 

Penn landing at Blue Anchor Inn 137 ^ 

Penn landing at Chester 137- 

Penn's treaty with the Indians 139 -- 

The LcTetitia House 148^ 

James II 180 

William of Orange 200 

The Slate-roof House 243 ' 

Penn's silver tea service 24G 

Jordan's Meeting-House 343 ' 

John Penn 350- 

Thomas Penn 356 

Map showing Connecticut's claim in Middle States. Page 3G0 

Arrest of the Connecticut settlers 363 . 



CHAPTER I 

1G44-16G0 

THE ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 



WILLIAM PENN 



CHAPTER I 

1644-1660 
THE ENVIRONMENT OP HIS YOUTH 

The seventeenth century was essentially an epoch of 
warfare between kingly despotism and the conscience of 
the people. During that century, for the first time since the 
birth of Christ, aspirations for religious liberty found em- 
bodiment in organized armies and achieved definite form 
in victory over the hosts of oppression and the hordes of 
bigotry. It witnessed two revolutions in England, in which 
the forces of the people were arrayed against monarchs 
who aimed at absolutism; in which religious freedom 
waged war against dynastic intolerance. The whole result 
was one king beheaded and another driven from his throne 
to die in exile. 

On the Continent of Europe the seventeenth century 
witnessed the emancipation of North Germany from the 
sway of the Holy Roman Empire. Its first half saw the 
Thirty Years' War, illuminated by the genius of Gustav 
Adolf and made splendid by his heroic virtues. Its last 
half saw the complete religious liberation of North Ger- 

3 



WILLIAM PENN 

many, the growth of a great Protestant power in Prussia, 
and the elevation of the house of Hohenzollern to mon- 
archy based upon toleration; destined to carry the princi- 
ples of free thought and unfettered conscience from the 
shores of the Baltic to the banks of the Danube, from the 
summits of the Carpathians to the foot-hills of the Alps. 

Beyond the confines of Europe the seventeenth cen- 
tury saw the cause of religious freedom and toleration of 
conscience carried in frail barks far across the Atlantic 
and planted ineradicably in the virgin wilderness of 
America; planted in isolated colonies, few in numbers but 
indomitable in soul ; colonies destined through much trav- 
ail and great tribulation to blossom and bear fruit in the 
mightiest republic of earth's history. 

In such an environment, and near the middle of such 
an era, William Penn was born, hard by the gates of Lon- 
don Tower, on October 14, 1644. It was the year of Mar- 
ston Moor, and the child was only a year old when Crom- 
well, from the smoke and carnage of Naseby, proclaimed 
the cause of the people gained. He was little more than 
four years old when the stubborn Stuart king died beneath 
the ax at Whitehall. His childhood and early youth to 
the age of sixteen were passed amid the scenes and sub- 
ject to the austere yet simple popular thought and manners 
of the great Protectorate; the social atmosphere of Crom- 
well and the Puritans ; the political inspirations of an Eng- 
land that then, for the first time, began to feel her power. 

Upon a bright boy such as he, the lessons of such a time 
could not fail to make a deep and lasting impress. 
Whether the actual outcome in later years was that best 

4 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

suited to his powers for usefulness has been debated by the 
ablest pens for nearly two centuries and without apparent 
conclusion. The discussion need not be pursued here. 

The character of William Penn presents three sides: 
the political, the commercial, and the religious. With the 
last-mentioned aspect the writer possesses neither the 
capacity nor the inclination to deal. It is his purpose to 
view Penn as an agent and promoter of secular civiliza- 
tion in its broadest sense, and therefore his religious char- 
acter need not be introduced except as it may from time 
to time become incidental as a key. 

William Penn came of seafaring and fighting stock on 
the paternal side and of commercial stock on the maternal. 
His father was Captain — afterward Admiral — Sir William 
Penn of the British navy. His mother was ]\Iargaret, 
daughter of John Jasper, an English merchant, settled in 
Rotterdam as correspondent or "resident partner" of an 
important London trading-house. 

The fact that Penn's mother was living in Rotterdam 
when married has apparently led some writers to conclude 
that he was half Dutch. But this, like many hasty conclu- 
sions reached in historical research, is an error. Margaret 
Jasper was quite as English as Captain Penn, and their 
son was a full-blood, thoroughbred Englishman. 

Captain Penn was the son of a daring and successful 
merchant captain named Giles Penn, who had taken his 
boy to sea with him at the early age of ten, teaching him 
step by step the mariner's art in the hard school of actual 
practise. In 1638, when the young sailor was seventeen, 
his father secured for him the warrant of master's mate 

5 



WILLIAM PENN 

in the royal navy. The rapidity of his promotion is all 
the evidence we have of his ability; but that is enough. 
At nineteen he was master commandant; at twenty-one 
second captain of Blake's flag-ship; and at twenty-three 
post captain in command of the Speaker, a new second- 
rate ship, said by such authorities as Charnock and Fincham 
to have been "the best-built ship of her time." 

Captain Penn did not remain quite a year in that rank ; 
he was promoted to be rear-admiral before reaching the 
age of twenty-five. This was in 1645, a year after William 
Penn's birth. His rise thenceforward was almost equally 
remarkable, until in 1751, at the age of thirty, he was pro- 
moted to the highest rank a seagoing officer could then 
attain — that of Vice-Admiral of England — inferior only 
to the Lord High Admiral. By this time Cromwell was in 
the fulness of his power. The monarchy had expired on 
the block with King Charles and England was a common- 
wealth instead of a kingdom. 

These vast changes wrought havoc among public serv- 
ants on land. Soldiers and civic functionaries alike had, 
perforce, to take sides. But it was different with the 
navy. Governments and rulers might come and go, but 
the navy "went on forever," During the final struggle 
between Charles and Parliament, when an effort was made 
to induce the navy to declare openly for the King, Admiral 
Blake — the foremost seaman of his time — issued a Private 
Circular to Ofiicers of Rank. In this he said : 

It is not meet that we should meddle in affairs of 
the land. True it is that two parties ashore are fighting 
for control of England. But whichsoever may win, they 

6 




ADMIKAL SIR WILLIAM TENN. 
Father of William Peiiii. 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

will be Englishmen and the country England still. . . . 
Our office is to defend all England from the designs of 
foreigners. Therefore we must be united. Should schism 
come into our midst and mutiny, the distractions of our 
country would be without end and both factions together 
would fall prey to our common enemies. It therefore be- 
hooveth us to keep our strength against a day of need. 
It is not for us to mind state affairs, but to keep foreigners 
from fooling us altogether. Government is all one to us, 
so it be the government of England by Englishmen! 

Wisely hearkening to the counsels of its cherished chief- 
tain, the British navy kept the peace outside while con- 
tending parties fought to the finish within the realm. And 
the navy was as ready to obey the Protector as it had been 
to obey the King ; as zealous to fight for the Commonwealth 
as it had been to battle for the Crown. 

Young Rear-Admiral Penn, along with many others as 
fervent royalists at heart as himself, accepted the advice 
of the old sea-dog philosopher, and upon the accession of 
Cromwell to absolute power was not long left without 
reward. The day after Christmas, in 1654, a fleet of fifty- 
four ships, including sixteen transports, sailed from the 
Motherbank with a force of 4,200 men on board. The 
commander of the fleet was Vice-Admiral Penn; of the 
land forces General Venables. The destination was Cuba. 
The object was to strike a blow against Spain in her weak- 
est part. This expedition is chiefly remarkable as being 
the first effort put forth by England on a large scale to 
employ her sea power offensively against distant foes. 

Drake had indeed ravaged the Spanish main long be- 

7 



WILLIAM PENN 

fore that, and had "singed the Spaniard's beard" in far- 
off seas. But Drake 's exploits were more the raids of buc- 
caneer than organized operations in regular warfare. The 
expedition of Penn and Venables was the first to combine 
sea and land forces in a systematic attack having a well- 
defined objective. 

Like most pioneer enterprises, it failed — and failed 
miserably. Penn and Venables returned to England in 
1655 to abide the wrath of Cromwell, who forthwith took 
away the commissions of both and threw them into dun- 
geons in the Tower to ruminate on the uncertain fortunes 
of war. To Venables he said: "No doubt you did your 
best — in all things but one! You might have died with 
your soldiers ! ' ' 

To Penn, Cromwell imputed no particular blame, ex- 
cept that he had commanded the naval arm of a combined 
expedition that failed as a whole. Just a century later 
England shot Admiral Byng for failing in a smaller mat- 
ter. Cromwell was more lenient than the second George. 

All these things happened while young William Penn 
was struggling with the manifold ills and tribulations of 
childhood down to his eleventh birthday. But, young as 
he was, the sudden misfortunes of his father deeply and 
ineradicably impressed his mind. The Penn family then 
lived on a small estate at Wanstead in Essex, and William 
had been for about two years a student at the Free Gram- 
mar-school of Chigwell, founded by the late Archbishop 
of York, the most learned Dr. Samuel Harsnet. 

Some idea of the educational atmosphere of Chig- 
well may be gained from the Articles of Foundation as 

8 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

drawn up by the Episcopalian founder. Among other 
things, Dr. Harsnet proclaimed that "the master should 
be a good poet; of sound religion, neither papist nor puri- 
tan; of a grave behavior; no tipler, no puffer of tobacco; 
and, above all, apt in teaching and severe in government. 
... Of reading there should be none but the Greek and 
Latin classics; no novelties, fictions, nor conceited modern 
writings." 

The incarceration of the admiral in the Tower caused 
his wife and child to move from Wanstead and take apart- 
ments near that historic pile. This event detached young 
William from the Chigwell school at the age of twelve, and 
he never returned to it. In fact, though its course of study 
was supposed to carry boys up to the age of sixteen, he 
had to all intents and purposes exhausted its curriculum 
at twelve. 

The admiral was not long prostrated under the great 
Protector's displeasure. He promptly petitioned Crom- 
well that the commander of the naval part of the expedi- 
tion could not be held responsible for the conduct of the 
land part of it. He had safely convoyed General Vena- 
bles 's army to the scene of operations and landed his troops 
without accident at the place selected by the general for 
debarkation. He had then blockaded the coast to prevent 
reenforcements or supplies reaching the enemy from Spain. 
Finally, when the land forces retreated to their ships in 
much confusion and distress, he had put ashore a force of 
sailors and "ship soldiers" (the marines of that day) to 
cover their retreat and protect their reembarkation. After 
detaching a suitable squadron to convoy the transports 

9 



WILLIAM PENN 

back to England, he had cruised with the rest of his fleet 
on the station as long as his victualing would permit, and 
had "much harried the commerce of the enemy and 
grievously beaten up his coasts. ' ' 

The Protector accepted Admiral Penn's memorial, and 
after some investigation released him from the Tower, re- 
instated him in rank, and restored all his emoluments — 
including the special allowance of £365 a year granted 
four years before for eminent services in the Dutch war 
of 1652. But he did not give the admiral further com- 
mand or other employment at sea. The fact was, that by 
the year 1656 Cromwell, though to all outward appear- 
ances in the zenith of his power, had already discerned 
the growth or recrudescence of royalism not only among 
the people, but in the services as well, even the "new 
model" army having begun to show symptoms of the dis- 
affection that, only four years later, was destined to cul- 
minate in General Monk and the Restoration. 

That Cromwell's distrust of Admiral Penn's fealty to 
the Commonwealth and the protectory did him no injustice 
was abundantly proved when the test and the opportunity 
came. As a naval officer afloat Penn had adopted Blake's 
advice and had supported the Cromwellian cause right 
sturdily against the Dutch and the Spaniards for the sake 
of England. But at heart he had never been anything 
but a royalist, a monarchist, and a Stuartist. He was by 
no means alone in the Protector's suspicions. Many others 
of high rank and great power in the state shared them. 
And the suspicions were as well founded in other cases as 
in Penn's, 

10 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

Cromwell was too shrewd not to observe the clouds 
gathering over his head. Though the year 1656 had been 
signalized by the election of a Parliament all his own, which 
not only voted all the supplies he asked for in aid of the 
Spanish War, but offered him a crown he did not ask — a 
crown he sternly refused — yet his sagacity taught him that 
Puritanism, as a predominant political power in England, 
was nearing its end. He doubtless felt that, waning though 
the forces of his party might be, there was yet enough left 
of the heart and bone and fiber that had won Marston Moor, 
Naseby, Dunbar, and Worcester to win again if only he 
could be spared to command. Though he well knew that 
England at large was tiring of Puritan rule — which meant 
the ascendency of less than one-fourth over more than the 
other three-fourths of all the people — yet he was resolved 
to hold the grasp he and they had fixed upon the throat 
of government to the last breath of his own marvelous 
life and to the last drop of Praise-God-Barebones blood in 
his sect and his army. He reckoned right. So long as 
Cromwell lived, no one or no multitude in England wished 
to provoke again the sword of Naseby or the ax of White- 
hall! 

Though secure in this, he was insecure in all else. And 
so, beetle-browed and defiant to the end, one of the great- 
est Englishmen that ever lived eked out in slow disease 
and in sullen distrust of all who had best served him in 
the heyday of fortune — from Sir Harry Vane to Sir Wil- 
liam Penn — the last two years of a life that has never yet 
found an adequate biographer, a career that still needs a 
competent historian. 

11 



WILLIAM PENN 

Admiral Penn lost no time in moping. As soon as his 
foot crossed the Tower threshold he moved his family back 
to the Wanstead house and went himself to Ireland, bent 
upon clearing title to an estate in the County Cork in 
which his father, Giles Penn, had long before acquired a 
lawful, though disputed, interest. 

Young William Penn was then just past twelve years 
old. During the next four years the admiral was absent 
from home nearly all the time, and young William did not 
return to the Chigwell school. Most of his biographers 
adopt the theory that his education was in the care of 
"private tutors" from 1656 to 1660; but there seems to 
be no extant evidence of it in family papers or in the 
voluminous writings of Penn himself. 

Ordinarily the years between twelve and sixteen do not 
afford material for an interesting chapter in the biography 
of even the greatest of men. As a rule, those four are 
what old-fashioned people call "the monstrous years" of 
a boy; full of mischief, redolent with the aroma of birch, 
a period to be forgotten or ignored rather than paraded 
or perpetuated. 

It was different in the case of William Penn. These 
four years were the formative period of his mind, the 
receptive period of his nature, and the determinative period 
of his career. Completely to understand this we must 
survey his mental quality and his moral environment to- 
gether. His mind had grown or was growing far in ad- 
vance of his years. His bodily development was as pre- 
cocious as his growth of brain. Both were abnormal. 

The time in which he lived his boyhood — or what ought 

12 



ENVIRONMENT OP HIS YOUTH 

to have been his boyhood — was the middle of the seven- 
teenth century. The first half of that century was a veri- 
table cyclone of theologies. At least four-fifths of the 
English literature of that period was written by sectarian 
preachers and read by schismatic zealots. 

Fortunately for the peace of mankind it has mostly 
been forgotten now. If a writer in this year of grace 
should offer a simple list of the names of those whose 
writings convulsed England two hundred and fifty years 
ago, he would either dishearten his readers at the outset 
or drive them to aimless and unprofitable delving in obscure 
literature. This is as it should be. The theological ava- 
lanche that devastated the seventeenth century has long 
since spent its force in the chasms of oblivion and been 
melted in the steady sunlight of common sense. But in 
Penn's youth-time this avalanche was descending like a 
snow-plunge from the crags of the Jungf rau ! 

To change the simile, when Martin Luther cut the 
strings by which Romanism had for ages held human 
thought in leash, the result was like that of uncorking 
champagne not properly cooled. The long pent-up wine 
effervesced half its substance in froth and foam that van- 
ished in the air which had oxygenated it, and the foam and 
froth left no trace but a literature as evanescent as the 
causes of its being. 

Of this ephemeral and fortunately forgotten literature 
doubtless the most captivating to the student of dialectics 
pure and simple, or of rhetoric for rhetoric's sake alone, 
are the writings of John Saltmarsh. It is probably safe 
to say that not more than one man in a hundred thousand 

13 



WILLIAM PENN 

to-day, fairly conversant with English literature, will be 
any the wiser for the mention of Saltmarsh's name than 
he was before he heard or read it. And yet, when William 
Penn was a boy between twelve and sixteen, John Salt- 
marsh was among the foremost writers — if not altogether 
the leading writer — of theological polemics in the language. 
He was born in Yorkshire, in the year 1596, just fifty years 
after Martin Luther died. Educated for the Presbyterian 
ministry, he took up the great reformer's doctrine of 
''justification by faith," declared it to be "but a glimpse 
of the true light," and forthwith endowed himself with 
the attributes of divine glory incarnate. His writings were 
voluminous, and as many of them were published as he 
or those he deluded could pay for the printing of. From 
Presbyterian he became Puritan by an easy step; from 
Puritan he passed to Antinomian. 

Doubtless some of us have smiled at the quaint conceit 
of the French traveler in this country many years ago who 
described the United States as "a land of three hundred 
and sixty-five religions and one gravy." We are not ad- 
vised as to the number of gravies in the English cuisine 
of the seventeenth century, but there can be no doubt as 
to the redundancy of religions. Theological thought was 
running mad. Dissents, protests, and new dispensations 
were the order of the day. There were denominations, 
creeds, and schisms. Then divisions and subdivisions in 
the denominations, creeds within creeds, and schisms from 
schisms. Sects multiplied like insects. Finally, in the 
high riot of this doctrinal hurricane — this theological cloud- 
burst — it was easier to found a new sect than refrain from 

14 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

founding one. Almost every non-conformist minister capa- 
ble of polemic writing or paroxysmal preaching had a sect 
of his own, frequently named after the preacher himself 
by affixing "ite" to his cognomen. 

Could Martin Luther have had a second advent and 
visited England a hundred years after his death, he must 
have been overwhelmed with horror at the monstrous mul- 
titude of fantastic ''beliefs" and grotesque "doctrines" 
into which his own plain and simple faith had been dis- 
torted and tortured. In one word, England, at the middle 
of the seventeenth century, was a theological Babel, in 
which no disputant understood the language of the others 
— and many a one of them could not comprehend his 
own! 

Into such a chaos John Saltmarsh threw all the forces 
of a mystic mind and a marvelous pen. He wrote books 
and preached sermons. The culmination — the cJief-d'ceuvre 
— of his polemic literature was Sparkles of Glory. This 
little work could hardly be found now outside of a few 
great public libraries or an occasional private collection of 
rare and quaint books. Yet two hundred and fifty years 
ago it was the most talked-about if not most widely read 
book in England. Dissenting and non-conformist preach- 
ers of a hundred sects and schisms laid aside the Bible to 
take their texts from Saltmarsh. Orthodox and strict- 
conformist prelates, professors, and clergymen "replied to" 
him by the dozen and denounced him by the legion. 

He was to the Protestantism of his time what Percy 
Bysshe Shelley became to the atheism of a later day — its 
ultimate intellectual development, its extreme visible 

15 



WILLIAM PENN 

apostle. There was, however, this difference : Shelley wrote 
a great deal of rationalistic philosophy in captivating verse ; 
John Saltmarsh wrote volumes of transcendental poetry 
in mystic prose. To. exhibit at once the fine chaos of his 
fancy and the subtle cant of his diction one extract may 
suffice : 

All outward administration, whether as to religion 
or as to natural, civil, and moral things, is only the 
visible appearance of God as to the world or in this crea- 
tion; or, the clothing of God, being such forms and dis- 
pensations as God puts on Amongst Men to appear to them 
in : this is the garment the Son of God was clothed in down 
to the feet or to His lowest appearance. And God doth 
not fix Himself upon any one form or outward dispensa- 
tion, but at His own will and pleasure comes forth in such 
and such an administration and goes out of it and leaves 
it and takes up another. And this is clear in all God's 
proceedings with the world, both in the Jewish Church and 
State, and Christians now. 

And when God has gone out and hath left such an 
administration, of what kind soever it is, be it religious, 
moral or civil, such an administration is a desolate house, 
a temple whose veil is rent, a sun whose light is darkened ; 
and to worship it then is to worship an idol, an image, a 
form, without God or any manifestation of God in it, save 
to him who, as Paul saith, knows an idol to be nothing. 

The pure, spiritual, comprehensive Christian, then, is 
one who grows up with God from administration to admin- 
istration and so walks with God in all his removes and 
spiritual increases and flowings. 

This rhapsody contains the key to Saltmarsh 's doctrine. 
Stripped of mystical metaphor, it amounts to a protest 

16 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

against all formalism, regularity, and discipline in religious 
organization ; against canons, observances, litanies, set 
modes of worship, and ordained ecclesiastical functions of 
all kinds whatsoever. On the other hand, it amounts to 
a declaration that the human conscience which "grows up 
with God" is a supreme law unto itself and unto its own 
being. Interpreted in connection with another passage 
which follows it, in a dissertation upon "the Inner Light," 
it means that in all "pure, spiritual, comprehensive" re- 
ligion the conscience of the individual, sanctified by the 
"Inner Light," must be the measure of sanctity and the 
guide to holiness. The postulate of all this is that organ- 
ized churches, under any and all forms of administration, 
may become "desolate houses" or "temples whose veils 
are rent" or "suns whose light is darkened," whenever 
' ' God is gone out and hath left such an administration. ' ' 

It remains to add only that the sole judge as to whether 
"God is gone out and hath left such an administration," 
etc., is the conscience of the individual sanctified by the 
"Inner Light." And the individual is also endowed with 
judgment from which there can be no appeal as to the 
presence of the "Inner Light" in his own conscience, and 
also as to its quality, degree, and intensity. 

Viewed upon the plane of common sense this doctrine 
of Saltmarsh was the opposite extreme to a then prevail- 
ing canon of Romanism. That Church in those days de- 
clared the infallibility of the Pope. Saltmarsh retorted 
by declaring the infallibility of the individual. 

This was a convenient doctrine for emotional persons, 
or for those whom Saltmarsh himself designates as "glow- 
3 17 



WILLIAM PENN 

ing souls." Almost any emotional person in the presence 
of great peril, or under stress of a cruel bereavement, or 
hypnotized by the rant of a revivalist, might be seized with 
a mental spasm or moral paroxysm and easily mistake it 
for the "Inner Light." For this psychological phenom- 
enon Saltmarsh seems to have made no provision whatever. 
But most of his readers were people of little knowledge, 
less education, and redundant superstition. Hence, his 
lapse in this particular made no difference. And as the 
faith of the disciple could not possibly be less logical than 
the precepts of the teacher, his doctrine found numerous 
converts not only in one creed, but here and there in all. 

Though Saltmarsh expounded a doctrine, he did not 
follow the usual practise of his time by proselyting a sect 
upon it. That omission may have been due to his lack of 
the executive ability required. Or he may not have lived 
long enough. At all events, he became insane at the age 
of forty-eight — perhaps overcome by an effort to compre- 
hend his own creed — and died three years later in the 
Chelmsford asylum. In the last stages of his mania he 
fancied himself Christ returned to earth, implored his at- 
tendants to bind up the bleeding wounds of crucifixion, 
and ever and anon would recite with singular eloquence 
some of the most beautiful passages in his Sparkles of 
Glory. 

Among the first works — perhaps the very first — that 
young William Penn read, aside from text-books, was the 
book just mentioned. Imagine the influence such a work 
so clothed in mysticism and so beclouded in imagery would 
have upon a young untrained and inexperienced mind, 

18 








GEORGE FOX. 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

far beyond its years already in receptivity and suscepti- 
bility to the appeals of the strange, the unknown, and the 
beautiful ! 

Whether the reading of Saltmarsh would have done 
more than promote a tendency to mysticism in young 
Penn's mental processes may be doubted. But just about 
the time he was reading this Antinomian gospel and try- 
ing to understand its application to human affairs, a new 
sect, based upon the central doctrine of Saltmarsh, came 
to the front, the sect founded by George Fox and named 
by him the ' ' Society of Friends. ' ' 

So far as can be ascertained from authentic records. 
Fox began to preach in 1647, the same year in which Salt- 
marsh was dying. Whether the first expounder of the 
doctrine would have approved the apostle's practical ap- 
plication of it must forever remain an unanswered ques- 
tion, because mania and death deprived him of the oppor- 
tunity to investigate or even observe the work of Fox. 
The two men were antipodal in fiber, traits, and antece- 
dents. One was a classical scholar of exquisite learning; 
the other a "village yokel," as his contemporaries called 
him. One was a recluse, a dreamer, and a poet; the other 
a hustling, stalwart zealot, a giant in bodily strength, moral 
fortitude, and mental audacity. One was a subtle-brained 
mystic of the cloister; the other a huge-muscled, strong- 
voiced preacher of the open air, the fields, and the high- 
ways. 

Fox proclaimed that God had appeared to him as in 
a pillar of cloud and "called him to awaken men from their 
lifeless forms and dogmas to a sense of the vital need of 

19 



WILLIAM PENN 

living, inward, spiritual religion."* He avowed in the 
broadest sense and most sweeping scope the doctrine of 
supremacy, even absolutism, of the individual conscience 
sanctified by the Inner Light. Though he claimed that 
God had become manifest to him in a way amounting to 
revelation, he did not assume for himself the personal 
apostolic character, but broadly granted to every one who 
listened to him similar freedom of conscience, equal ac- 
cessibility to the Inner Light, and like liberty to be each 
one's own judge. In short, he held that every man 
might have a revelation of his own, that there might 
be as many manifestations of God in the conscience as 
there were converts — a doctrine which may perhaps, 
without irreverence, be described as "every man his own 
Moses!" 

This doctrine was by no means original with Saltmarsh 
as an ideal, nor peculiar to George Fox in sectarian prac- 
tise. With modifications to suit time, place, and racial 
conditions, it was and is the doctrine of the North Ameri- 
can Indians, the Arab dervishes of the Soudan — and of 
every freethinker from Plato to Robert Ingersoll. 

Fox was not a man to rest his case upon doctrinal points 
alone. His strong sense of the practical, the tangible, and 
the visible taught him the need of observance as well as 
of faith; of outward manifestation as well as the Inner 
Light. So he formulated what might be called "canons 
of his church." Some of his precepts were sound and 
salutary in law and morals, some were visionary and 
chimerical, while others were frivolous and whimsical. 

The sound and salutary precepts of Fox were not new. 
* Fox's Journal, vol. i, pp. 103-104. 
20 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

On the contrary, they were the commonplaces of a correct 
life, involving ordinary uprightness in worldly affairs, sim- 
ple honesty, and common decency — precepts that had been 
inculcated and enforced by pagans long before the name 
of Christ was known. But the new canons of Fox were 
either visions or whims or chimeras. He proceeded to 
flout the old decalogue, if for no worse or better reason 
than that God had revealed it to Moses instead of to George 
Fox ; or because there were commandments in the old deca- 
logue that might be obnoxious to the Inward Light. And 
then he proceeded to formulate a decalogue of his own. 
We say "decalogue" simply for convenience, though as a 
matter of fact the commandments that Fox declared the 
Lord had directed him to promulgate were not exactly ten 
in number. Indeed, in number they were somewhat in- 
definite. They were not proclaimed at any one time, but 
now and then, from time to time, as the Inward Light 
seemed to move him. The result was that, after a while, 
when Fox's commandments multiplied with his sermons, 
they began to conflict one with another, until it became 
hard to tell which was which — law or heresy, the true faith 
or all ungodliness. Chief among the articles of Fox's 
faith were certain affectations which we may let him de- 
scribe in his own words, as recorded on page 114 of the 
first volume of his Journal : 

The Lord gently led me along and let me see His love, 
which surpasseth all knowledge that men can get by his- 
tory or books. . . . And the Lord sent me forth to awaken 
the people and turn them from Darkness to the Light. . . . 
Moreover, when the Lord sent me forth into the world He 

21 



WILLIAM PENN 

forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low ; and He 
required me to "thee and thou" all men and women, with- 
out any respect to rich or poor, great or small. And, as 
I traveled up and down I was not to bid people good mor- 
row or good evening; neither might I bow or scrape with 
my leg to any one. 

He also advised — though we can not find that he rigidly 
prescribed — a peculiar style of dress for each sex which 
he himself designed and set the example of wearing as "an 
emblem of equality among men and a token of humility 
before God." Fox is doubtless the only one who ever be- 
lieved that dress could make men equal or that God takes 
account of fashion-plates ! 

Whatever significance these canons may have had in the 
fanatical fancy that conceived, or in the simple, credulous 
minds that obeyed them, they impressed mankind at large 
as whims, none the less ridiculous because harmless. The 
"hat canon" was viewed simply as a boorish denial of com- 
mon politeness; the "thee and thou" usage as an unwar- 
ranted familiarity when addressed to strangers. The sin- 
gularity of garb we may let a contemporary describe : ' ' Af- 
fecting to despise all afi'ectation, " said Thomas Croxton, 
a Puritan preacher, "these Quakers regulate unto them- 
selves a livery which, since it be not the uniform cloth of 
soldiery, can be naught else but the quintessence of affecta- 
tion itself." 

Among the tenets that were visionary and chimerical 
was that of "universal peace" in an age and under condi- 
tions of universal war, an age in which, but for the fight- 
ing of Gustav Adolf's Lutherans and of Cromwell's Puri- 

22 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

tans, Quakerism itself could never have had a chance to 
breathe, and George Fox's sermons had likely been silenced 
by the gibbet or the stake ! However beautiful in fancy 
or theory, primitive Quakerism was utterly impracticable, 
and though it had warrant in some teachings of the Bible, 
it exposed its devotees to the contempt of their fellow men 
in that era wholly and, to some extent, ever since. 

There is a fundamental trait of human nature — a trait 
than which none other lies nearer the foundation of all 
truth, right, and manhood — that may be described as an 
instinctive distrust of any doctrine or any principle which 
its devotees are not willing to fight for. 

There were many aspects of the Puritan creed and 
many idiosyncrasies of its believers quite as grotesque as 
anything in Quakerism, according to George Fox. But, un- 
like the Quaker, the Puritan would fight for his faith ; and 
when he did feel that the spirit of God moved him to 
*' smite abomination in the sight of the Lord hip and thigh," 
he made the climate torrid for his adversaries' — whereunto 
Marston and Naseby, Dunbar and Worcester had already 
borne bloody witness. He was always ready to show forth 
his faith by his works and to argue his points of doctrine 
with the point of the sabre. 

Many years ago there was, at Old Litchfield, in Con- 
necticut, a family gathered from the four quarters of the 
continent to celebrate the bicentenary of their ancestor's 
settlement there. The ancestor was a sergeant in Ireton's 
Ironsides * with whom the climate of England disagreed 

* It seems to be a common belief that only Cromwell's own regiment 
of cavalry — or " horse," as mounted troops were then called — was known 

23 



WILLIAM PENN 

very soon after Charles II was restored. It was an old- 
fashioned Puritan Thanksgi\ang affair, in which, as a 
rule, the grace of God before dinner and acute indigestion 
afterward figured with relatively equal prominence. There 
was, however, one event in that bicentenary which seems 
apropos to this context. It was in the form of a few lines 
composed and written by a great-granddaughter of the old 
ancestor in the sixth generation, and she recited them. 
They have never been printed. Perhaps they never ought 
to be. But they embody such a perfect description of the 
Conquering Puritan, as contrasted with the Suffering 
Quaker, that we can not refrain from offering here an ex- 
tract from them : 

The great religion he professed 

Was stern faith of unflinching breast. 

The gospel that he preached and prayed 

Was but three words : Be not afraid ! ' 

He knew no sin for which alone 

Faith's courage could not all atone. 

His creed held mortal but one vice : 

He forgave all but cowardice. 

To him the faith was life and light ; 

He prayed and fought in God's own sight, 

as " Ironsides." As a matter of fact all the regiments of horse in the 
Parliamentary army, or "New Model " in military phrase, were called by 
that name, because they wore cuirass and helmet of sheet iron. The 
Cavaliers also wore similar armor, but it was of brass and ornamented ; 
whereas that of the Puritans was, like their own natures, of iron, luster- 
less, unpolished, and grim. Their other epithet, " Roundheads," vras pro- 
voked by the shape of their helmets, which were hemispherical and per- 
fectly plain. 

24 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

And ever, as the battle grew, 
His prayer found faith and hope anew. 
And when his foes lay cold and grim, 
He humbly sang thanksgiving hymn ; 
And, bending knee on blood-stained sod, 
Breathed victor's praise to battle's God! 

Achilles in his maddened joy 

Dragged Hector dead round walls of Troy, 

Not so the man of stalwart might 

Who strove for freedom, truth, and right. 

He only fought for leave to pray 

And worship God his simple way. 

And when his battle waged was won. 

He meekly said, " God's will be done." 

Ah, Cavaliers of Romish cross, 

Ye called him •' Caitiff ! " " Hind ! " and "Dross ! " 

Pray tell me, held ye him so poor 

At red sunset on Marston Moor ? 

Ah, Puritan, thy fame is young ; 

Thy hero epic all unsung ; 

But in far future's misty dream 

Shall shine thy glory's sunrise beam.* 

No Quaker maiden will ever have occasion to write in 
that strain about an ancestor in the seventeenth century — 
or any other. The Puritan's faith was austere, his ob- 
servances were somber, and his daily walk and conversation 
full of what the less drastic religions consider cant if not 
hypocrisy. But whatever the Catholics with their in- 

* Written by Miss Anna Buell. 

25 



WILLIAM PENN 

dulgences or the Episcopalians over their wine-bottles 
might think of "Praise-God Barebones," all had to confess 
that there was no hypocrisy in the destruction of twenty 
thousand Cavaliers by eight thousand Puritans at Preston ; 
no "cant" in.the charge of Cromwell's Ironsides at Marston 
Moor ! One hour of Puritan victory on the battle-field was 
worth more to the cause of religious freedom than could 
have been a cycle of stoical Quaker fortitude in jail. 

That this ' ' non-combatant canon ' ' in Quakerism was not 
due to deficiency in courage goes without saying. The 
Quakers were Englishmen — a remark which sufficiently 
covers that part of the ground. It must then be ascribed 
to the same cause as the other peculiarities noted — a fanat- 
ical purpose to be not like other men. 

It is a singular fact and almost imique, that the desig- 
nation of the sect itself as commonly received, as historic- 
ally approved, and tacitly adopted by its devotees, is not 
the one its founder chose for it. Fox called his proselytes 
"Friends." The word "Quaker" was applied by their 
adversaries as a term of derision, an epithet of contempt. 
The best description we have seen of the origin of the epithet 
is that offered by the Puritan preacher Croxton : 

They are called ' ' Quakers ' ' — a name they do much pro- 
test and wish to pass to and fro in the title of "Friends." 
But the describing them "Quakers" is an invention of 
some who, from curiosity or mischief, stand about their 
preachings in the highways. It comes of their fashion of 
speaking with tremulous voice, shaking of the head, and 
making the body and limbs to quake violently like one in 
ague ; their object being no doubt to press upon the mind of 
listener or beholder a sense that they be possessed and 

26 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

almost torn and riven by the throes of the Spirit within 
them. 

Bradford, another Puritan writer — related to Bradford 
of Plymouth Rock — speaking of the neighborhood of Leeds 
about 1657, or in the tenth year of Fox's preaching, says: 

The sect called ''Friends" by their own tongue and 
"Quakers" by all other mankind doth grow and flourish 
grievously here. They are not like unto any kind or man- 
ner of men and women ever seen or known in this Com- 
monwealth since the memory of man. They wear a kind 
of livery they call the livery of the Lord their Master, than 
whom they own no other. Their mode of address is un- 
couth and insolent ; the same to their betters as to their own 
kind. They profess to a light of particular revelation 
unto themselves alone, and that without which, as their 
preachers say, no one in all the world may be saved. They 
refuse to make the oaths of justice; their marriages are 
concubinous except as their offspring may be saved from 
bastardy by the common law; they defy the law, saying 
each one that his own conscience with the Inward Light of 
God's Grace be above all law, scripta or non-scripta; and 
altogether they are a pest unto the true servants of the 
Lord. When apprehended and lodged in jail for viola- 
tions of the law forbidding riotous assembly and blas- 
phemy, they endure without complaint, pretending to be- 
lieve that they be suffering for righteousness' sake and 
proclaiming that they be persecuted by a wicked and 
adulterous generation. ... It is hard to understand why 
such blasphemy should be heard in the name of the Lord. 
Some say they are bewitched ! 

Whatever may be one 's opinion of George Fox 's preten- 
sions as the medium of revelation from God through him- 

27 



WILLIAM PENN 

self to mankind, and howsoever one may view the canons 
and observances which he declared the Lord had enjoined 
him to prescribe for the guidance and conduct of his disci- 
ples and converts, there was one thing about him which 
closely approached the miraculous : that was his command 
of language, a facility of expression both with tongue and 
pen. He acquired this early in his career. While not 
wholly illiterate, he had never attended any institution of 
learning more pretentious than the humblest of parish 
schools, and there his education stopped with learning to 
read. It is said that his mother taught him to write. But 
it is more probable that he learned to write from printed 
books, because his earlier manuscripts were a labored initia- 
tion of italic print, exhibiting great painstaking and re- 
markable accuracy. In later life he learned by practise to 
write faster and his penmanship more and more took the 
form of script. 

So far as reading was concerned, there is no evidence 
that before his twentieth year he had read anything beyond 
the New Testament and Saltmarsh's Sparkles of Glory. In 
his writings one constantly detects evidences of effort to 
imitate Saltmarsh's imagery — efforts naturally attended 
with scant success ; and his best and most forceful writings 
were those in which he gave his own practical and analytical 
mind free rein in his own rugged style. As an orator he 
was marvelously magnetic, fluent in words, and overwhelm- 
ing in power of expression. He never seemed at loss for a 
word or phrase, and he had an art possessed by hardly any 
learned man or scholar of his day or any other — the art of 
analyzing and interpreting into plain English that any 

28 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

one could understand the most involved sentences and the 
most abstruse proi)ositions to be found in the transcendental 
religio-metaphysics that formed the theological literature 
of the seventeenth century. Finding a knowledge of the 
classics requisite in conducting discussions with the highly 
educated clergymen who assailed him, he mastered Greek 
and Latin in the first three years of his ministry; and 
George Whitefield says that before he reached the age of 
thirty (seventh year of his ministry) he could read and 
write Hebrew with more facility than the average scholar 
of the universities. In these studies, it must be said, he 
enjoyed the melancholy advantage of considerable enforced 
leisure and undisturbed privacy in various jails. 

It can not be denied that the early Quakers owed most 
of their persecutions to the eccentricities and asperities of 
speech, dress, and deportment which they cherished, and 
very little to the doctrines they proclaimed or the language 
in which they put them forth. For all these peculiarities, 
trivial in themselves but important in their consequences, 
George Fox was responsible. In fact, he laid more stress 
on the whimsical "hat canon" and on the frivolous "thee 
and thou" than upon doctrinal points in theology. Born 
in the humblest circumstances, nurtured in poverty, plainly 
bred, and yet feeling even amid his most untoward sur- 
roundings the mighty power of his own mind, Ik^ hated the 
rich, the polite, and the well-bred, and embraced the first 
opportunities to exhibit his resentment toward them. 
This was the impulse that found expression in the "revela- 
tion" already (pioted, in which, according to his own version, 
the Lord "required him" to direct his followers to dispense 

29 



WILLIAM PENN 

with all ordinary and every-day forms of the commonest 
politeness and most primitive courtesy. Some of Fox's 
biographers or apologists — notably Dr. Stoughton in his 
Life of Penn — make labored efforts to show that he must 
have been sincere in these whims and earnestly believed 
that they entered into the substance of his faith. It may be 
so. But, even if this be so, such explanation stamps him 
as a much lower type of fanatic than those who admire his 
wonderful intellect like to believe. It is easy enough to 
comprehend such a policy as an artifice intended to sub- 
serve a particular purpose,* but to conceive it as a part of 
the teachings of Christ is to deny the first tenet of Christ's 
religion — the Golden Rule — which, in a dozen words, ex- 
hausts all laws of gentleness, politeness, courtesy, and con- 
cern for the feelings of others. Be that as it may, the 
early Quakers suffered ten times more persecution for Fox 's 
whims than for their actual doctrines, beliefs, or modes of 
worship. 

Such a review of Fox at this point in the present work 
has seemed necessary to a proper understanding of William 
Penn's youthful environment, the influences which deter- 
mined his mental and moral tendencies, and thereby shaped 
the development of his character and the history of his 
career. 

* What we mean by " particular purpose" here is a design to inflame 
the resentment of his hearers — mostly people of narrow, untrained minds 
and lowly station — against the rich, the well-bred, and the polite. No 
more effective way to accomplish this could be devised than by persuading 
them that the Lord had commanded them, by revelation through him 
(Fox), to be rude in manner, insolent in speech, and uncouth in dress as 
a visible protest against such " vanities of the world," as courtesy, polite- 
ness, and attire of the fashion in vogue. 

30 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

Judged by his antecedents, by the natural or normal sur- 
roundings of his youth, and by the ambitions of his parents 
in his behalf, he was almost the last man to be reasonably 
regarded as a possible convert to Quakerism. But he was 
among the earliest ; and he rose to a rank in the sect which, 
for real importance in his own time and for permanent im- 
press upon human affairs, far surpassed that of the founder 
himself. 

Four years had passed, and he was now sixteen years 
old. The time had arrived when the completion of his 
studies must be arranged for and the course of his future 
definitely marked out. He had already exhausted the capa- 
bilities of the Free Grammar-school of Chigwell, had proba- 
bly enjoyed some desultory tuition by private tutors, had 
traveled far enough to visit his father, who during that 
period lived mostly in Ireland, dividing his time between 
his estate there and the duties of Governor of Kinsale 
and commander of the coast-guard, to which he had 
been appointed by Richard Cromwell after the death of 
Oliver. 

But, so far as his future was concerned, these events 
were of trivial importance in comparison with the facts 
that he had read Saltmarsh's Sparkles of Glory, and had 
heard the preaching of Thomas Loe. Moreover, during 
this period, as described by himself in subsequent writings 
— though without exact mention of the time — he had ex- 
perienced when alone in his chamber *'an inward com- 
fort ' ' ; and he thought there was ' ' an external glory in the 
room, which gave rise to religious emotions"; and during 
which he "had the strongest conviction of the being of a 

31 



WILLIAM PENN 

God and that the soul of man was capable of enjoying com- 
munion with him"; and then he "believed also that the 
seal of divinity had been put upon him and that he had at 
this moment been awakened or called to a holy life. ' ' 

According to the chronological arrangement of the 
work in which the confession of this experience appears, 
it must have occurred somewhere between the age of thirteen 
and fifteen. He considered it his "first spiritual experi- 
ence." It may not, however, be amiss to remark that the 
language in which he describes it is in many respects a 
close copy of one of Saltmarsh's rhapsodies in Sparkles of 
Glory. 

That he had heard Thomas Loe preach is attested by 
an old manuscript of 1727, from the pen of Thomas Harvey, 
who states that he received the story from Penn himself. 
This manuscript is freely and approvingly quoted by the 
authoress of The Penns and Penningtons ; though it is full 
of statements likely to impress its reader with a sense of 
Harvey's lively imagination, if not, indeed, with occasional 
distrust as to its genuineness. It must be borne constantly 
in mind that the age was one of imagination and fantasy — 
and that, too, more notably in religious than in any other 
line of thought. 

The substance of Harvey's story is that Penn, when 
about fourteen, was visiting his father at Cork, when 
Thomas Loe happened to be preaching there, and that the 
boy heard one of his sermons in the market-place. Young 
Penn was so impressed that he invited Loe to come with 
him to his father's house; and when he arrived there, Loe 
preached in the presence of the admiral and other inmates 

32 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

of the household, causing them — the admiral included — to 
weep and inquire what they should do to be saved. 

The intrinsically improbable thing about this is that 
Admiral Penn should have listened to a strolling street- 
preacher of any faith. The admiral was a Presbyterian in 
Cromwell 's time and an Episcopalian whenever the Stuarts 
ruled. The ease with which he could accommodate his 
faith to his policy for the time being indicates that the 
admiral's religious impressions were not of the burning 
kind. Even if, to humor a whim of his favorite son and 
heir, he might admit a street-preacher to his house and 
listen to him courteously, it is in the last degree improbable 
that he could have been moved to tears or made to cry out 
for salvation. However, the story — of which the above is 
only a brief synopsis — was related by Harvey with vast 
unction in his Manuscript of 1727, and it caught the fervid 
fancy of Maria Webb, who, in her Penns and Penningtons, 
gives it an importance that a less emotional author might 
have reserved for something approaching the character of 
revelation. 

Be this as it may, we have Penn's own testimony that 
his ultimate conversion to Quakerism and his "call to 
preach" were due to the fact that ''the Lord visited me 
with a certain sound and testimony of his eternal Word, 
through one of those the world calls a Quaker, namely, 
Thomas Loe." * 

Thus, as in a progression, we observe that Penn 's youth- 
ful mind was first prepared by the mysticism of Saltmarsh 
for the seed of Quakerism to be sown by Thomas Loe's 

* Penn's Journal, p 102. 

4 33 



WILLIAM PENN 

preaching; and as his conversion was the most important 
event in his career — that upon which all other events were 
consequent — it seems worth while to know who and what 
Thomas Loe was. 

Born at Lichfield — some accounts say Oxford — about 
1625, of a well-to-do and well-connected family, young Loe 
was sent to Oxford University when about seventeen. This 
was in 1642, or at the time when the control of the institu- 
tion was passing from Episcopal to Presbyterian hands. 
Indeed, one sketch of Loe that we have seen — Trials and 
Triumphs of the Primitive Friends — describes him as the 
son of a Presbyterian clergyman. Loe, too, was a disciple 
of Saltmarsh. At the beginning of his third year in Ox- 
ford he was arraigned for blasphemy and expelled. Two 
years afterward, or in 1647, he became one of Fox's earliest 
converts and began preaching about 1649. Early in his 
ministry Loe went to Ireland, and that country continued 
to be the field of his labors — or the principal field — for 
several years. He was the first to preach the Quaker faith 
in the Gaelic tongue; and it is said of him that he learned 
that difficult language, from its rudiments to perfect 
fluency, in eight months! His style of oratory was much 
more polished than that of Fox. His forte was pathos, 
where Fox's was invective. His appeals were to the sym- 
pathies of his hearers, while Fox appealed to their resent- 
ments. He held out the promise of salvation as the reward 
of repentance, while Fox preached danmation as the penalty 
of unrepentance. In a word, Loe played upon the strings 
of human tenderness, while Fox hammered upon men's 
passions and their fears. 

34 



ENVIRONMENT OF HIS YOUTH 

There is no recorded evidence that Penn heard Fox 
preach at any time prior to his own conversion, though he 
had undoubtedly read some of his epistles before that. 

Under such conditions and a mind so ''prepared for the 
seed," as he himself expresses it, William Penn matricu- 
lated as a fellow of Christ Church College, Oxford, Michael- 
mas-tide, 1660, at the age of sixteen. 



35 



CHAPTER II 

1660-1662. 

UNDER THE RESTORATION 



CHAPTER II 

1660-1662. 
UNDER THE RESTORATION 

Simultaneously with Penn 's entry at Oxford occurred 
an event quite as important in his temporal history as 
reading of Saltmarsh and the preaching of Thomas Loe 
were in his spiritual. That was the restoration of the 
Stuarts. The effect on the fortunes of Penn was at first 
indirect. It began with the renewal of his father's per- 
sonal prestige and professional standing. The fact that 
Admiral Penn never fully regained Cromwell's confidence 
after the abortive West Indian expedition of 1655- '56 has 
been noted. Richard Cromwell, after the death of the 
great Protector, in 1658, appointed the admiral Governor 
of Kinsale and Commandant of the Coast-guard District for 
the Southwest of Ireland, but that was little more than a 
sinecure. Probably Admiral Penn was at the time the ablest 
officer in the British navy. But Cromwell as early as 1656 
had begun to doubt his fidelity to the Commonwealth, and 
did not trust him with any important sea command, though 
fully exonerating him from personal responsibility for the 
failure of the expedition against the Spanish West Indies. 

The admiral, as already noted, abundantly justified 
Cromwell's suspicions. At least two months before Charles 

39 



WILLIAM PENN 

II landed in England (say in March, 1660) Admiral Penn, 
still holding his position in Ireland under Richard Crom- 
well, threw off all disguise and declared for the restoration 
of the Stuart dynasty. It afterward became known that 
for some time preceding this he had been corresponding 
secretly with James, Duke of York, younger brother of 
Charles II, and also with General Monk. The precise date 
at which the correspondence began can not be determined ; 
but it was probably in 1659, when the inability of Richard 
Cromwell to fill his father's place had been amply demon- 
strated. It is not probable that Admiral Penn, ardent 
royalist though he was, would have ventured so far during 
the lifetime of Oliver Cromwell ; because the great Pro- 
tector had means of finding out things not known to all 
men, and he also had a mode of dealing with such practises 
as secret correspondence with the exiled Stuarts which few 
men liked to tempt. But in the brief and troubled reign 
of Richard this peril did not exist. 

Be this as it may, there was a personal as well as a 
political reason for close fellowship between Admiral Penn 
and the Duke of York. The latter had in early youth 
manifested a predilection for the sea. In 1643, when only 
ten years old, he had received instruction in the rudiments 
of navigation, and among his tutors had been Penn, then a 
captain — though only twenty-two years old. During the 
long exile of the surviving Stuarts in France and Holland 
there had been some opportunity for keeping up this ac- 
quaintance. Naturally, therefore, when with the Restora- 
tion the Duke of York was made Lord High Admiral, the 
star of Penn also rose. 

40 



UNDER THE RESTORATION 

One of the duke's first acts was to appoint Penn 
captain-general of the fleet, and the King confirmed him 
in the title of baronet. About two years afterward the 
King, through the influence of the Duke of York, proposed 
to raise Sir William Penn to the peerage as Earl of Wey- 
mouth; but for reasons to be hereafter explained this 
proposition was not carried into efl^ect.* 

At this point, in view of the intimate relation of religious 
affairs to the secular career of William Penn, it becomes 
necessary to survey the effect of the Restoration upon 
spiritual conditions in England. 

Charles II, like all the Stuarts, was at heart a Catholic. 
Although when restored to the throne of his father he 
made a covenant to uphold and defend the Church of Eng- 
land — that is, the Episcopal creed — this was wholly politi- 
cal and had no personal significance whatever. Charles, 
though a Catholic by baptism and confession, was by no 
means a bigot. He was too clever a fellow and too fond 
of the good things of this world for that. He swore to 
uphold and defend the Episcopal Church simply because 
the English people would not restore him under any other 
conditions, and he was not the kind of man to weigh a 
faith against a throne, a church against a crown. 

* Regarding Admiral Perm's royalism, Pepys makes a quaint entry in 
his diary under date of March 12, 1662 : " Sir W. Pen told me of a speech 
he had made to the Low States of Holland telling them to their faces that 
he ohserved he was not received with the respect and observance now 
(coming to them from the King) as when he came from the Rebel and 
Traitor, Cromwell — by whom I am sure he got all he hath in the world 
and the Dutch knew it too ! " 

This speech was probably made in 1661, when Admiral Penn was sent 
as the bearer of a message from King Charles to William of Orange, then 
Stadtholder. 

41 



WILLIAM PENN 

Now it happened that the Anglican Church of that day 
differed from the Church of Rome chiefly, if not wholly, 
in the fact that it lacked a Pope and an Inquisition. In 
Cromwell's time the "dissenters" and "non-conformists" 
who ruled the state were not very careful or precise in 
observance of the distinction above noted. In their estima- 
tion the only "doctrinal points" of importance on which 
the papacy and the episcopacy differed were that the latter 
did not openly grant indulgences and did accord less prom- 
inence to the Virgin Mary as an object of worship. For 
the rest, from the non-conformist point of view, both creeds 
were alike. They "prayed out of books" — the Puritans 
said — "and wore gowns and surplices and cassocks, and 
kissed the altar and turned their backs on the congregation 
and had holy candles and all kinds of idolatrous abomina- 
tions in the sight of the Lord ! ' ' And, if we may accept 
non-conformist testimony on other and more practical 
points, the Episcopalians were not far behind the Catholics 
in proscription, intolerance, and persecution. Among the 
manuscript sermons of Elder John Buel, a Puritan 
preacher of that period, we find the declaration that "they 
who exchanged Popery for Episcopy made a sorry trade. 
There was as much real liberty of conscience under Papist 
Mary as now under Church-of-England Charles; save that 
burnings be not in vogue now as then. But the jails are 
full, and the pillory and cart-tail busy with victims whose 
crime is worshiping God without idols, candles, or Latin 
screeds ! 

"Verily, the little finger of Episcopy is become thicker 
than the thigh of Popery, and it has come to pass that 'Dis- 

42 



UNDER THE RESTORATION 

senter' be now a stronger word upon the tongue than 
'Heretic' ever was." 

Possibly, in the stoutness of his Puritan heart, old Elder 
John's lament was more bitter than the actual conditions 
justified. Less liberty of conscience than existed in the 
brief reign of Bloody Mary is inconceivable. And while 
the prompting spirit might be similar, there was yet a vast 
difference between the stake and the pillory ; between death 
and a few weeks or months in jail ; between the deadly 
flames and even the severest "whipping at the cart-tail." 
If, therefore, we desire to draw a perfectly just distinction 
between English popery in the middle of the sixteenth 
century and English episcopacy in the latter half of the 
seventeenth, we must make due note of the wide differences 
in ecclesiastical discipline above set forth. This would, of 
course, exhibit commendable progress on the part of the 
Established Church as compared with its immediate prede- 
cessor. Progress of all kinds was slow in those days as 
compared with our own times ; and from such point of view 
the fact that in the course of one century the English Epis- 
copalians had ameliorated religious persecution from burn- 
ing heretics at the stake to mere whipping of dissenters at 
the cart-tail, must be accepted as a most gratifying growth 
of toleration. 

There was much more practical sense in another sermon 
of Elder John about the same time : 

If Godliness be decreed a crime and the realm given 
over to Priestliness for once and all, so be it. What signi- 
fies a name, be it Popery or Episcopy, so the sum of it be 
alike priestliness at either end ? 

43 



WILLIAM PENN 

If all that came to pass in the last twenty years [mean- 
ing from 1640 to 1660] could not free the people's conscience 
and save their sanctuaries from the constable or the hired 
soldier, surely then naught in England can, now or ever- 
more. 

It is hard to yield our birthright in the soil. Hard 
to go away from the places we have known and cherished 
to places we have never seen and know naught of. But 
as it appears our fair England is given over to abomina- 
tion beyond our power, under God, to cure, then we must 
seek another land and make for ourselves new homes. For 
this the Lord hath provided America, whither a goodly 
stem of our faith is already planted. 

It is a wilderness, like unto that of the Forty Days; 
but the trees do not persecute! Men are there, but they 
are pagan savages only; not savages like unto our own, 
with racks and roasting-chairs and Nuremberg ]\Iaidens 
and Latin screed-worships ! No Pope have they, nor in- 
quisition nor lords-spiritual of bishoprics and Archbish- 
oprics ; nor prebendaries, nor any other kind of holy leech 
fastened upon the body of the people to suck their blood ! 

Let us, therefore, forsake in the Lord's name this be- 
sotten land and go across the seas, where after much toil 
and great tribulation we may yet build a new abode of the 
Faith that shall glorify Him ! 

Elder John was as good as his word. During "the last 
twenty years" mentioned in his discourse he had manfully 
born musketoon and broadsword in Ireton's regiment. 
He had fought in those battles which the Puritan soldiers 
used to open with prayer and finish with butchery. Not only 
had he fought, but he had also preached and prayed. Now 
it seemed all for naught. So the veteran of Marston Moor 
and Dunbar gathered about him his family and little flock, 

44 



UNDER THE RESTORATION 

and though Time had begmi to plow furrows in his cheeks 
and sift snow upon his hair, he and they sailed away from 
the placid vales and the level meadows of Huntingdon for 
the untrodden wilds of Connecticut! Landing at Say- 
brook just twenty years before William Penn saw the capes 
of the Delaware, they forthwith plunged thence into the 
savage fastnesses of what we now call Litchfield, to hew out 
new homes and plant new sanctuaries far beyond the reach 
of pope or prelate. 

We have given so much space to the experience of stout 
old Elder John and his flock because they were the type 
of many, and because of our knowledge of him and them is 
more intimately personal than of any others. 

The type was universal among English non-conformists 
after the Restoration. The milder or more tactful sects, 
such as the Orthodox Presbyterians, the General Baptists, 
and the plain Lutherans, managed to get along fairly well 
with the Established Church, but had to content themselves 
with the practise of infinite prudence and a good deal of 
silence. For the more radical Puritans — and a little later 
the Quakers — there was no refuge from the storm but in 
flight to other shores. 

However, for persecution of the Puritans there was a 
reason in the philosophy of the house of Stuart that did not 
exist with other creeds. They were no more dissenters or 
non-conformists than the Presbyterians, the Baptists, or 
the Lutherans. Their mode of propagating the Gospel may 
have been a little more vigorous or less circumspect, but that 
was not the bottom cause for the singling of them out to 
be punished. The great and unforgivable offense of the 

45 



WILLIAM PENN 

Puritans in Stuart eyes was that they had been the bone 
and sinew of the revolution; that, though numerically a 
minority in the parliamentary party as compared with all 
the other revolting sects in sum total, they were the pre- 
dominant faction by sheer force of intellect, audacity, and 
desperate resolution. With Cromwell at their head they 
overbore all opposition, all doubt, and all conservatism. 
They were the ultra-Radicals of the English revolution, 
alike in war and in peace, on the battle-field and in Parlia- 
ment. To borrow a simile from the politics of our own 
times, Cromwell was the most colossal "Boss" and his 
Puritans the most devoted and daring "henchmen" the 
world has ever seen! It was the superlative nerve of 
Cromwell and the desperate fidelity of his Puritans that 
enabled him and them, though but a handful in the total 
population of England, to overturn a monarchy and rule 
upon its ruins with utter absolutism and no little downright 
despotism for a generation. 

Moreover, the "court," so-called, that condemned the 
King, the soldiers who guarded his execution-block, and the 
butcher who beheaded him, were all Puritans of the deepest 
dye. Charles II was indeed the "Merry Monarch." We 
like to believe that he would always rather have been kind 
than cruel. But he must have been something more — or 
less — than human had he failed in resentment toward 
those whom he considered his father's murderers — a view 
of them which was then and is yet shared by many who 
never drew a Catholic or royalist breath and who sym- 
pathized then or sympathize now wholly with the political 
aims of the Puritans and their gigantic chieftain. 

46 



UNDER THE RESTORATION 

In connection with this matter it should be noted that 
the persecution of the Quakers was totally distinct in cause 
and provocation from that visited upon the Puritans. 
Quakerism came into being under Puritan rule — not earlier 
than 1647. The converts of George Fox were first perse- 
cuted by the Puritans themselves. And they suffered more 
in the reign of Oliver than in those of the two Stuart mon- 
archs who followed him. In a word, the Stuarts punished 
the Puritans because the Puritans had hurt the Stuarts and 
were formidable foes. Everybody seemed to persecute the 
Quakers for no better reason than that they never hurt any- 
body and were ridiculous. 

The usual Episcopal accusation against the Puritans was 
' ' sedition " or " seditious heresy, ' ' which was made a felony 
by the Conformity Act of 1662. But it was not customary 
to accuse the Quakers of "sedition." The common charge 
against them was "blasphemy" or "disorderly assem- 
blage." In some cases, spies or informers would contrive 
to be present at their weddings, the peculiar mode of which 
is well known. Then the bride and groom would be 
arrested for "unlawful cohabitation," or "adultery" or 
any similar charge the informers might choose to make. 
Men and women were publicly stripped and flogged for 
' ' Quaker marriages ! ' ' 

The "Quaker marriage" in the seventeenth century 
was much like the cognate ceremony among the North 
American Indians or primitive times, or of the Mormons 
of Nauvoo, according to the gospel of Joseph Smith. The 
contracting parties simply joined hands in the presence of 
witnesses, declared their devotion to each other, announced 

47 



WILLIAM PENN 

their intention to cohabit, and then made record of the 
agreement in a book provided for the purpose. This was 
exactly the IMormon ceremony of Naiivoo and Deseret, alike 
for wives and for concubines ; and it differed from the abo- 
riginal rites only in the fact that the Indians did not keep 
records in books. 

Yet the common law, as expounded by Coke and Little- 
ton, provided for protection from illegitimacy of the off- 
spring of marriages ' ' by common consent and public notori- 
ety," which, liberally interpreted, would have saved the 
Quaker weddings from the charge of "adulterous agree- 
ments" and their fruit from the stain of bastardy. But 
the blind zealotry and the prescriptive bigotry of the Epis- 
copal Church in the last days of the Stuart dynasty simply 
grinned at the common law, and forced its own sacerdotal 
decrees upon helpless mankind with as little compunction 
as Romanism had ever shown in its darkest days — and with 
less common sense than popery had exhibited at its worst! 

Proscription and ostracism did not have long to wait. 
Hardly had the restored King warmed his throne-seat 
when heads on pikestaffs began to adorn London Bridge. 
The fury spread. It is not the province of this work to 
trace in detail the events immediately consequent upon the 
Restoration except in so far as they affected the career of 
our subject. Naturally, among the first things the Estab- 
lished Church struck at were the fountains of learning. 
No Puritan or Presbyterian or Baptist was left in control 
of any school, college, or university that the powers of the 
state could reach. At Oxford and Cambridge the heads 
first began to fall. Charles had not been King three months 

48 



UNDER THE RESTORATION 

when the great, learned, and conservative Dr. Owen was 
forced to give place to Dr. Reynolds as dean of Christ 
Church. But the High Church cried out against Dr. Rey- 
nolds that he was too mild, and forced him to make way for 
Mr. Morley — plain George at first, but promptly manufac- 
tured into a doctor of divinity to meet the emergency. 
Honor be to Dr. George Morley that he did not in all things 
prove the pliant tool of proscription that the exultant Epis- 
copalians who urged his nomination hoped and expected 
he would. On the contrary, he proved in the long run so 
just, broad, and wisely conservative that those who had 
been ardent to set him up soon tried in vain to pull him 
down. They seemed to think that, because he had been 
chaplain to Charles I, he would be quick to inoculate the 
veins of English learning with the virus of state Church- 
ism, and convert the ancient temple of universal thought 
into chambers of a sectarian inquisition. 

As in Christ Church, so in Magdalen and throughout 
the colleges of the grand old university. The venerable Dr. 
Goodwin, the mildest of Puritans — so mild, indeed, that 
during the Cromwellian reign many "barebones" petitions 
had gone up to the Protector for his removal' — this benig- 
nant old man was displaced for Dr. Oliver. In this, how- 
ever, there might have been a shade of poetic justice, be- 
cause Dr. Oliver had been displaced by Cromwell for Dr. 
Goodwin thirteen years before ! 

So radical and sweeping were these sectarian changes, 
so wholesale was the state Church raid upon English learn- 
ing, that in the two great universities alone the supply of 
Episcopal doctors of divinity ran short, and it was found 
5 49 



WILLIAM PENN 

necessary, as Dr. Stoiighton tells us, to manufacture to 
order seventy brand-new D. D.s for educational purposes 
in the first twelvemonth of the restored monarchy and re- 
established state Church. History by no means records 
that all these new-fledged doctors of divinity were un- 
worthy. On the other hand, most of them proved capable 
instructors and, in the general sense, safe guides for the 
young minds intrusted to their care. 

We have already remarked that the literature of the 
seventeenth century, with a few very illustrious exceptions, 
such as Milton, Dr. Johnson, and Dryden, was a seething 
mass of polemical theology or spiritual mysticism long since 
consigned to kindly oblivion. But we must also bear in 
mind that the wonderful renaissance of practical thought 
and robust realism which illuminated the dawn of the 
eighteenth century was the product of brains trained under 
the educational auspices of England in the last days of the 
Stuart dynasty, of minds developed under the sway of the 
improvised faculties which the frantic rapacity of the state 
Church fairly "conscripted" into the service of the great 
English schools at the beginning of the Restoration. 



50 



CHAPTER III 

16C1-1G70. 

UNDER HIS FATHER'S DISPLEASURE 



CHAPTER III 

1661-1670. 
UNDER HIS father's DISPLEASURE 

Naturally, young William Penn, as a freshman at 
Christ Church, was among the first to feel the effects of 
such all-pervading change, such complete bouleverscment. 
He was not yet a Quaker. If anything, he was as much 
Puritan as the thoroughly barebones environment of Wan- 
stead and Chigwell could make of one so young and of such 
searching mind. But, in any event, he was far from the 
fold of the state Church, and every day 's growth of obser- 
vation and experience increased that distance. He had not 
been in Christ Church College a year when it became a total 
certainty that, whatever he might be, there were two things 
neither of which he ever would he — papist or Episcopalian. 

There is no historical record to show what his standing 
in classes was during his two years at Oxford. About all 
vouchsafed on that score is that he was well grown for his 
age, full of physical life and muscle, fond of college sports, 
and, in general, duly mindful of the monitory pealings of 
"Big Tom" night and morning. 

Meantime the academic paraphernalia and ecclesiastical 
forms of the state Church control were gradually recover- 
ing their hold on the university. The set prayer-book was 

53 



WILLIAM PENN 

substituted for the extempore petition of chapel exercise, 
and liturgy displaced the Bible chapter. Against this re- 
vival of what many of the young dons called popish mum- 
mery there was vigorous protest ending in a very consider- 
able secession from the regular exercises, and the seceders 
soon began to meet for exercises of their own and in their 
own way. 

Of course, in the estimation of the state Church authori- 
ties these secession meetings were nothing more nor less 
than riotous assemblages to be put down by the strong hand 
of college law. The seceders were warned to attend the 
regular exercises. Then the new state Church faculty 
found that the spirit which but little more than a score 
of years before had led to revolution was still alive and 
strong within the Oxonian walls. But Dr. Morley and Dr. 
Oliver were not men to be trifled with by a set of unruly 
boys. The recalcitrant dons were fined and otherwise pun- 
ished by curtailment of privileges. A few succumbed, bjit 
a great majority held out. 

Among these William Penn was a leader. He seems to 
have construed the Saltmarsh doctrine literally as he under- 
stood it. He held that so long as the faculty required a 
form of religious observance repugnant to the conscience of 
the student, the college authorities had no moral right to 
enforce it. He admitted their rightful power to make and 
enforce regulations pertaining to the secular discipline of 
the institution, but he denied in toto their prerogative to 
force upon any one ecclesiastical canons odious to the con- 
science and repugnant to the faith of any one, for no better 
reason than that he happened to be a fellow of the univer- 

54 



UNDER D18PLEASUUE 

sity. In this he drew a sharp and clear distinction between 
secular and spiritual discipline; and in that contention he 
was perfectly right, as all candid historians have long since 
admitted — besides some uncandid ones, including Macaulay. 

But the faculty did not stop at prayer-book and liturgy. 
They next required the canonical surplice to be worn on 
certain occasions. This produced undisguised revolt — open 
mutiny. Young Penn had now become the acknowledged 
leader of the liberty-of -conscience clan. He and his follow- 
ers not only refused to wear the despised livery of Episco- 
pacy themselves, but violently tore the surplices from the 
persons of those willing to wear them. Penn, in justifica- 
tion of such conduct, is said to have denounced the surplices 
as "popish rags!" This, of course, was a violation of his 
own professed principle. Any person has both moral and 
legal right to wear any garment that may please him, and 
to refuse to wear any that may be repugnant to him, the^ 
sole limitation being the statute relating to exposure of per- 
son. Thus Penn and his followers exhausted their own 
right when they refused to wear the surplices. And they 
violated the right of those from whom they tore them. 

These transactions terminated William Penn 's schooling 
at Oxford when he was eighteen years old. The common 
version is that he was expelled. But Dr. Stoughton, him- 
self an Oxonian, was unable to find any such record. Dr. 
Anthony Wood, in his Annals of Oxford, has a good deal to 
say about Penn. His sole comment on this event is the 
merest passing remark that "after two years, he traveled 
into France." 

But Penn himself, in his Journal of Travels on the Con- 

55 



WILLIAM PENN 

tinent in 1677, uses the phrase "my being banished from 
college." Expulsion from college is not necessarily an 
event of decisive importance in the history of a man. As 
already observed, there is no record of expulsion except 
Penn 's own phrase, and he uses the word ' ' banished. ' ' The 
inference is — though no direct evidence can be foiuid — that 
the faculty gave Penn the alternative of submission with 
apology or leaving the institution. This was then, and 
remains to this day, a common expedient in such cases. 
Penn would not submit or apologize, and so left the col- 
lege, without express record of the transaction. It is safe 
to assume that had so prominent a student as Penn was in 
college and so eminent a man in after-life been formally 
expelled, Anthony Wood must have made some note of it ; 
because his Annals in the History and Antiquities of Ox- 
ford and Athenae Oxonienses together bring the record 
down to 1694, when Penn was in the zenith of his fame. 

Some time prior to the trouble above discussed, the ad- 
miral contemplated removing his son from Oxford to Cam« 
bridge and consulted his friend Sir Samuel Pepys about 
it. (See Pepys 's Diary for January 25 and February 1, 
1662.) Sir William Penn blamed Dr. Owen for "pervert- 
ing his son." Under date of April 28, 1662, Pepys says: 

Sir W. Pen much troubled upon letters come last night. 
Shewed me one of Dr. Owen 's to his son, whereby it appears 
that his son is much perverted in his opinion by him ; which 
I now perceive is one thing that hath put Sir William so 
long off the hooks. 

The particular direction in which Dr. Owen's influence 
was exerted does not appear ; but it could hardly have been 

56 



UNDEK DISPLEASURE 

encouragement of revolt and mutiny against the proper 
discipline of the college. It may have been, and probably 
was, encouragement to be steadfast against the encroach- 
ments of formalist religion upon the domain of conscience 
and, maybe, advice to leave the institution if he could not 
reconcile its spiritual administration with his sense of re- 
ligious liberty. 

Be this as it may — and it is more interesting than im- 
portant — Penn left Oxford and returned to the parental 
roof in the fall of 1662. Sir William was now a State 
Churchman, having, as previously intimated, dropped his 
free-conscience doctrines upon the downfall of Cromwell- 
ism and resumed his formalist communion upon the Res- 
toration. The common story was that he became very 
angry with his son when the latter came home from Ox- 
ford, and, after an altercation in which young Penn de- 
fended his conduct from what Sir William considered the 
Quaker point of view, the admiral turned him out of doors. 
The authority for this story is found in Penn's Journal 
of 1677. In that journal he records a Quaker meeting at 
Leeuwarden, in the Netherlands, which he addressed, and 
he states the substance of his remarks. In this occurs the 
following : ' ' The bitter usage I underwent when I returned 
to my father; whipping, beating, and turning out of doors 
in 1662, etc." 

This would seem to be conclusive on the subject, for that 
journal was in Penn's handwriting and the copy from 
which it was printed was undoubtedly accurate. The story 
proceeds that the admiral was soon reconciled to his son 
through the mother's intercession, and early in 1663 young 

57 



WILLIAM PENN 

William was sent to visit Paris, where, the admiral hoped, 
he might find social influences calculated to wean him from 
Quaker predilections. About the only record of his visit 
to the French capital is an apocryphal story, resting on the 
testimony of the Harvey manuscript. This tale is to the 
effect that Penn, who, conformably to the fashion of the 
period, wore a small sword or rapier, was attacked on the 
street by "a haughty desperado," whom he "at once dis- 
armed by his keenness of fence!" And then, having the 
haughty desperado "wholly at his mercy, Penn not only 
spared his life, but picked up and courteously handed back 
to him his rapier, which had fallen to the ground!" As 
William Penn was only eighteen at this time, his precocity 
as a swordsman must have been equal at least, if not 
superior, to his remarkable progress as a religious reformer 
in such callow years. 

In view of the extent to which Thomas Harvey has been 
enabled to impress his lucubrations upon William Penn's 
history, mainly through that somewhat widely read book 
with a distinctively feminine title, The Penns and the Pen- 
ningtons, it may be worth while briefly to examine Mr. 
Harvey's pretensions. He was the son of a non-conform- 
ist preacher of the Presbyterian sect and became a convert 
to Quakerism about 1700. His "manuscript" — never 
printed except in the extracts made by the authoress of The 
Penns and the Penningtons — consists mainly of purported 
Conversations with William Penn. Harvey undoubtedly 
saw Penn and conversed with him toward the end of the 
latter 's life. He was a fanatical Quaker and his aim was 
to glorify Penn, at that time the head of the sect. But the 

58 



UNDEK DISPLEASURE 

general result of his efforts was to make his hero ridiculous, 
or to pose him in situations either wholly at variance with 
his character or intrinsically improbable. He was a zealot, 
filled with mistaken zeal. 

At this point it seems proper to digress, as briefly as 
may be, from the main thread of our theme. Penn was in 
France, and the reign was that of Louis XIV. Everything 
was Roman Catholic, except here and there an oasis of lib- 
erated thought, where the teachings of John Calvin, of 
Noyon — a whilom pupil of Melchior Wolmar, and Wolmar 
an "understudy" of Martin Luther himself — had weaned 
the simple, honest peasants of Picardy, Normandy, and 
Bretagne from the saiutism and the icons of Rome. 

It may not be out of place for the author to remark 
here that his study of the theology of the seventeenth cen- 
tury has been wholly historical, practical, secular, political; 
not in the slightest degree sectarian, schismatical, doctrinal, 
or spiritual. To go a step further, the author would rever- 
ently say that, in these studies, he has held Christ in view 
as the greatest and most enduring teacher the world has 
ever seen or ever shall see; inventor and expounder of a 
school and system of the ethics and philosophy of human 
being and action as impregnable as it is imperishable, as 
eternal as it is irrefragable, and as sound in reason as any 
one can possibly believe it to be true in divinity. 

From this point of view we have long been convinced 
that the most perfect development of reformed religion in 
the seventeenth century existed among the Lutherans of 
Scandinavia and the Netherlands and the Huguenots of 
France. Among them was found to all intents and pur- 

59 



WILLIAM PENN 

poses a common faith and a uniformity of observance quite 
as distinctive as those of papacy and the episcopacy — 
which latter, in that age at least, was little more or less than 
a sort of illicit offspring of popery itself. But this com- 
munity of faith and uniformity of observance were based 
not upon canons, not upon bulls of the pope, not upon the 
set laws of hierarchy, not upon images, candles, vestments, 
or holy water ; but upon the consensus of free minds and the 
intercommunion of consciences not enslaved. 

In this respect the early Protestantism of northern 
France and the north of Europe generally was out of all 
comparison purer, healthier, more glad, more cheerful, and 
altogether more trustable and more believable than that 
of England. In France and Sweden there was a single 
faith, clear, logical, practical, simple, and strong in works 
as well as in profession. In England there was, as we have 
already remarked, a babel of beliefs, a storm of sects, a 
cyclone of creeds, a raging tornado of theologies, and a 
howling hurricane of heterodoxies. In France and Sweden 
there were no Protestant sects; there were simply Protes- 
tants. In England there were almost as many sects as 
preachers, well-nigh as many creeds as chapels ! In France 
and Sweden every Protestant minister preached the same 
doctrines, counseled the same faith, besought the same 
pious behavior. In England it seemed that almost every 
preacher who could write a book had a theology of his own. 
Among the French and Swedish Protestants no fanatic 
could find voice — or if he could find voice he found none 
to listen. The Catholics were not without their ultra- 
zealots. Neither were the Protestants of England. And 

60 



UNDER DISPLEASURE 

viewed as mere zealotry, it is difficult at this distance to 
draw much distinction between one bigot school that was 
crazy and another that was cruel — whether the founder of 
one was Loyola or of the other George Fox ! 

Penn 's visit to France was in the halcyon days of French 
Protestantism. It was twenty-two years before the Revo- 
cation of the Edict of Nantes. The great Amyraut was 
nearing the end of his illustrious and useful life at the 
head of Saumur Seminary, center of Huguenot learning 
in France. Penn's stay in Paris was limited to about four 
months. Thence, desiring to perfect himself in the French 
language, he went to Saumur. This seems to have been 
with the full approbation of his father. The seminary was, 
of course, theological ; but the doctrines and observances 
taught there by Amyraut were those of a refined and soft- 
ened Calvinism — in a word, the Huguenot faith as we know 
it to-day. It was non-conformist from either Catholic or 
Episcopal point of view ; but it was a beautiful, cheerful 
faith, full of all human tenderness and domestic virtues, as 
near the true character and inspiration of Christ's actual 
teaching as any human creed has ever been. It had all the 
strength, consistency, and courage of Puritanism without 
any of its asperity, its austerity, or its gloom. It was indeed 
a Church militant, but not, like Puritanism, aggressive, in- 
tolerant or defiant. In other words, the Huguenots were 
Frenchmen, while the Puritans were Englishmen ; one cour- 
teous where the other would be gruff ; one gently regardful 
of the feelings of fellow men where the other would be 
rough-shod ; one polite where the other would be rude. About 
the only trait the Huguenot and the Puritan had in com- 

61 



WILLIAM PENN 

mon was that both stood always ready to fight for the faith. 
And even in this there was a difference : the Huguenot 
would alM'ays wait to be assailed ; the Puritan was always 
inclined to meet his foe half-way — and sometimes a little 
more. 

Probably Admiral Penn did not altogether draw these 
fine distinctions. But he knew at least that his son would 
hear no Quaker preaching at Saumur, see no hat worship, 
hear no theeing and thouing in the name of the Lord, be 
taught no doctrine that condemned politeness, deified dis- 
courtesy, or apotheosized the boor. In short, Sir William 
knew that in no part, article, or "convincement" of the 
religion inculcated at Saumur would be found the whims, 
the visions, or the chimeras of George Fox. 

Young William Penn spent nearly two years at Sau- 
mur — stayed there, in fact, until the death of the great and 
good Amyraut, whom he grew to revere with all the in- 
tensity of his fervid nature. During this period he mas- 
tered the French language and acquired the French man- 
ners so completely that, when he returned to England in 
1664, his father's old friend. Sir Samuel Pepys, loudly 
lamented in his diary about it : 

Comes to visit me [says Sir Samuel, under date of 
August 30, 1664] Mr. W. Pen. I perceive something of 
learning he hath got, but a great deal, if not too much 
of the vanity of the French garb, and affected manner of 
speech and gait. I fear all real profit he hath made of his 
travel will signify little. 

Sir William was, however, more favorably impressed. 
He is recorded as rejoicing that his son had come back to 

62 



UNDER DISPLEASURE 

him, after two years in France, "dressed in the garb and 
displaying the manners of a gentleman ! ' ' 

After a brief rest at home, young Penn, now in his 
twenty-first year, entered Lincoln's Inn as a student of 
law, at the admiral's suggestion. This was not with any 
intention of a career in the legal profession. Sir William's 
ambition was that his gifted son should become a states- 
man. He himself at that time was member of Parliament 
for Weymouth, and his purpose was to vacate the seat — a 
pocket borough — in favor of young William as soon as the 
latter should have completed a general study of the prin- 
ciples and philosophy of law and legislation. 

That stout Sir William was wise in his generation when 
he aspired to make a statesman of his precocious son is 
sufficiently attested by the later career of the son himself. 
The William Penn of history was a statesman. He was 
born to be one. But he did not become one until he could 
not help it — until he could no longer deny the claim of his 
birthright. His intermediate career as Quaker preacher, 
semimartyr, and almost fanatic is forgotten in his unfa- 
ding light as the founder of a great commonwealth; in his 
immortal eminence as the pioneer of equal rights, universal 
suffrage, and unqualified popular sovereignty. 

William Penn as a Quaker preacher and Quaker tract- 
writer, and William Penn as a world statesman and a uni- 
versal lawgiver, must be always held in wide contrast. 
He was preacher and tract-writer because of George Fox 
and Thomas Loe; he was statesman and enlightened law- 
giver in spite of them. Had he remained through life in 
the narrow trail they blazed for him, he must have sunk 

63 



WILLIAM PENN 

into the oblivion that has engulfed a myriad of fanatic 
doctrinaires and a host of polemic theologians of the cen- 
tury in which he lived. But when he broke away from 
their market-place proselytism and their mock martyrdom 
of parish jails in England, he forthwith achieved immortal 
fame as a substantial benefactor of mankind. 

For an apt illustration of the natural fatherly ambition 
Admiral Penn may have cherished for his remarkable son, 
his heir, or of the chagrin and despair that must have over- 
taken him when he saw what, from his point of view, were 
the fatal effects of Fox's tracts and Loe's hypnotism, we 
need not go far from home or much into the past. Let us 
suppose that a great American admiral — Farragut, for 
example — had rejoiced in a brilliant son and had exhausted 
all his powers and resources to put him en train for the 
highest honors our republic can bestow. Then let us sup- 
pose that such son, instead of treading the path to power, 
usefulness, and fame pointed out by his brave and saga- 
cious father, had fallen under the sinister hypnotism of 
Joseph Smith and embraced the seductive gospel embodied 
in the Book of Mormon ! Reflect now that, with polygamy 
left out, there was not much spiritual or moral or legal 
difference between the George-Foxism of the seventeenth 
century and the Joe-Smithism of the nineteenth ! 

It is not our intention to enter here upon an analytical 
comparison or contrast as between Quakerism and Mormon- 
ism doctrinally or as creeds. Our comparison is purely 
historical, not at all spiritual — an affair of relation to the 
time and place. From this point of view it can not be 
gainsaid that the Quakerism of Fox in the seventeenth cen- 

64 



UNDER DISPLEASURE 

tury Avas as obnoxious to religious opinion at large and as 
abhorrent to all received moral tenets as the Mormonism 
of Joseph Smith in the nineteenth. Each in its time was 
the one creed which all other creeds united to condemn, to 
denounce, and to persecute. And the persecution of Joseph 
Smith in this free republic of the nineteenth century was 
far more terribly drastic than that of George Fox in the 
Stuart-ridden England of the seventeenth; for nothing 
worse than durance ever happened to Fox ; but Smith was 
assassinated in Carthage jail by a masked mob of citizens 
belonging to the great, free, and enlightened Commonwealth 
of Illinois. 

From this purely historical and chronological point of 
view we do not see how the comparison, so far as Admiral 
Penn was concerned, can be viewed as far-fetched or 
inept. 

Soon after young Penn was fairly installed in chambers 
of Lincoln's Inn, war broke out between England and Hol- 
land. The admiral, appointed Captain-General of the 
Fleet, took the sea as second in command and chief of staff 
to the Lord High Admiral, his old friend, the Duke of York. 
The result of this campaign was the signal defeat of the 
Dutch off the Dogger Bank, which pcn-manently terminated 
the pretensions of the Netherlands to rank as a first-class 
sea power. Sir William Penn returned to England the 
foremost naval commander of his time, and enjoying fame 
and honors hardly second to those lavished in later years 
upon Hawke, Rodney, and Nelson. But he returned also 
to find his son "relapsing into Quakerism," as he expressed 
it. He now, as a last resort, sent young William to Ireland 
6 65 



WILLIAM PENN 

and placed him under the care and tutelage of James But- 
ler, Duke of Ormond, the admiral's intimate friend and 
then Viceroy or Lord Lieutenant. The vice-regal court 
was brilliant. Penn was only twenty-one, and he was de- 
veloped physically and mentally alike to the stature of 
twenty-five. Under the influence of the Duke of Ormond 
and the court entourage, the young man soon resumed 
the ways of polite society ; and the duke, who was well 
aware of the admiral's purpose in sending him to Ireland, 
congratulated Sir William upon his son's evident abandon- 
ment of the visions which had affected his earlier youth. 
So marked was this tendency that young Penn joined a local 
military organization and participated in the siege of Car- 
rickfergus, whose garrison had risen in mutiny. During 
this experience the glamor of military life so profoundly 
impressed the young volunteer that he asked for a com- 
mission on the permanent establishment of the royal army, 
and the Duke of Ormond proposed to give him the captaincy 
of a company in the then local organization, which in 1689, 
upon the organization of the British regular army by Will- 
iam III, became the Eighteenth or Royal Irish Regiment 
of Foot, which it is now. 

The admiral, however, adhered to his purpose of train- 
ing young William for the career of a statesman, and per- 
emptorily vetoed the military proposition. It is worthy of 
remark that during this period William Penn sat for the 
only portrait ever painted of him from life. It represents 
him in the style and uniform of a royalist soldier — or sub- 
altern officer — with uniform and cuirass, flowing locks, and 
redundant scarf, exceedingly handsome, and of port and 

66 



UNDER DISPLEASURE 

mien as iimrtial as any cavalier. "It is a curious i'act, "' 
says one of Penn's biographers, "that the only genuine 
portrait of the great apostle of peace existing represents 
him armed and aceoutered as a soldier ! ' ' 

Sir William had by this time (1667) neglected the in- 
terests of his estate in Ireland nearly three years. His 
duties as member of Parliament and member of the Navy 
Board kept him busy. The machinations of his political 
enemies also troubled him. About this time they even tried 
to impeach him from the Navy Board, but so signally failed 
that there was no division of the Commons, and the House 
adjourned without action upon the question. Besides all 
these occupations, the health of Admiral Penn began to 
give way in the fall of 1667. 

The Irish estate — Shanningarry, County Cork — was a 
principal source of his income, and it was in sore need of 
intelligent and honest management. He therefore, in Sep- 
tember, 1667, wrote to young William, appointing him 
Clerk of the Cheque, in his sinecure office as Governor of 
Kinsale, and placing him in control of the Shanningarry 
estate with full power to reorganize and reform its man- 
agement. This he seems to have done with energy and 
ability sufficient to elicit praise from the admiral, who now 
believed that his ambitions and hopes for his son were in 
a fair way to be realized. 

But Sir William's gratification was short-lived. The 
estate was near the city of Cork, and young Penn soon heard 
that Thomas Loe was preaching there again. This exhorter 
seems to have possessed a marvelous fascination in Penn's 
eyes, an occult influence which in these days would likely 

67 



WILLIAM PENN 

be described as "hypnotic." We have seen, in an old tract 
printed during the reign of William and Mary, the declara- 
tion that it was Fox 's custom to ' ' aim at conversion of per- 
sons of note, men of rank and possessed of substantial 
estate. Convincement of the poor and lowly was always a 
light task, but Fox saw that such added not strength to 
his sect ; only weakness, for that they were a burden to their 
prosperous brethren and often brought discredit by their 
misbehavior. ' ' 

We hesitate to introduce this old tract as evidence; it 
was avowedly anti-Quaker; but some of its statements 
are of historical interest and well-known collateral facts 
sustain them by very strong inference, if not by positive 
corroboration. The author, speaking of Fox's methods, 
goes on to say in substance that, whenever he heard of any 
person above common station or possessed of some fortune 
displaying interest or even curiosity as to the preachings 
of Quakerism, he would find out if any particular preacher 
had special influence over such person, and then, to quote 
the language of the tract, "set that preacher upon that 
person ; to follow him, to make opportunity of being heard 
by him, and to labor privately with that person whensoever 
chance might throw them together. ' ' 

There is no lack of the "evidence of appearances" — to 
use a mild phrase" — that Thomas Loe was set upon William 
Penn. Conversion of the son of an admiral and baronet 
would naturally challenge Fox 's generalship from the social ■ 
point of view; while the large property to which he was 
heir-apparent would be a good thing to have in the sect. 
At any rate, if Fox did not specifically set Loe upon Penn, 

68 



UNDER DISPLEASURE 

a series of remarkable coincidences occurred. We have 
already given Thomas Harvey's version of Penn's listen- 
ing to Loe in Ireland when only thirteen years old, or 
thereabouts. Singularly Loe preached in Oxford, four 
years later, when Penn was in college there. And less 
than three years after that w^e find Loe preaching in Lon- 
don hard by Lincoln's Inn, where Penn was reading law. 
And now, when Penn was living on his father's estate, 
near Cork, Loe suddenly returns to that city, begins preach- 
ing there, and informs him of the fact through a Quakeress 
who made clothes for the young man. Thomas Harvey is, 
indeed, the authority for this last statement, but his version 
is generally corroborated by Penn himself in the Journal 
of 1677. If all this was coincidence, it would be in the 
last degree remarkable. If it was a case of "setting upon, 
following," etc., its processes were characterized by keen 
strategy, and its success was all that Fox, in his most san- 
guine moment, could have conceived possible. 

However, as we said at the outset, this testimony comes 
from an anti-Quaker source and is to be received with only 
such credibility as it may derive from corroborating facts 
and circumstances that are beyond dispute. The author 
of the tract declares that the setting of Loe upon Penn was 
not the only case of the kind ; that Fox set James Naylor in 
a similar way upon "a rich merchant of Bristol * and other 
noteworthy persons in the west of England," but names 
none of them; also that he "set Edward Burroughs upon 
Isaac Penington and others"; and that he even "had the 
effrontery to dog with Thomas Watson the footsteps of Lord 
* Thomas Callowhill, father of Penn's second wife. 

69 



WILLIAM PENN 

Coventry, but this last with the ill success such a churlish 
impudence deserved ! ' ' 

Of William Penn's final conversion — or "convince- 
ment," to use the Quaker phrase — there have been many 
accounts, all or nearly all written by members of his own 
sect and varying in detail according to the intensity of the 
Inward Light inspiring the writer for the time being. 
Among these the quaintest is that of Thomas Harvey, who 
says in his manuscript of 1727 : 

Penn, on his second coming to Cork, being the only one 
of the family there and requiring some articles of clothing, 
went to the shop of a woman Friend in the city to procure 
them. He expected she would have known him, but she 
did not. He was too much altered from the days of his 
boyhood, when the Friend had seen him, to be recognized 
by her now. However, he told her who he was, and spoke 
to her of Thomas Loe and of the meeting at his father's 
house ten or twelve years before. She admired at his re- 
membering, but he told her he should never forget it ; also 
that, if he only knew where that person was, if 'twere a 
hundred miles off, he would go to hear him again. She 
said he need not go so far, for that Friend had lately come 
thither and would be at meeting the next day. So he went 
to the meeting, and when Thomas Loe stood up to preach 
he was exceedingly reached and wept much. 

Another and intrinsically more probable version is that 
Loe sent word by this woman to Penn, or prompted her to 
advise him, that he had returned to Cork and intended to 
preach there. However, Penn has written an account of 
his own conversion, which, of course, must supersede all 

70 



UNDER DISPLEASURE 

others. We have already referred to it. The full text 
may be found on pages 102-103 of his Journal of Travels, 
1677. We offer only an extract sufficient to cover the main 
facts : 

I let them know how and when the Lord first appeared 
unto me, which was about the twelfth year of my age, 1656. 
How, at times betwixt that and the fifteenth year, the Lord 
visited me and the divine impressions He gave me of Him- 
self ; of my persecution at Oxford, and how the Lord sus- 
tained me in the midst of that hellish darkness and de- 
bauchery ; of my being banished the college, the bitter usage 
I underwent when I returned to my father; whipping, 
beating, and turning out of doors in 1662; of the Lord's 
dealings with me in France, and in the time of the great 
plague in London. In fine, the deep sense He gave me of 
the vanity of this world and of the irreligiousness of the 
religions of it. 

Then of my mournful and bitter cries to Him that He 
would show me His own way of life and salvation and my 
resolution to follow Him, whatever reproaches or sufferings 
should attend me ; and that with great reverence and bro- 
kenness of spirit. How, after all this the glory of the world 
overtook me and I was even ready to give myself up unto 
it ; seeing as yet no such things as the primitive spirit and 
Church on the earth; and being ready to faint concerning 
my hope of the restitution of all things, it was at this time 
that the Lord visited me with a certain sound and testimony 
of His eternal Word through one of those the world calls 
a Quaker, namely, Thomas Loe. I related to him the bitter 
mockings and scornings that fell upon me, the displeasure 
of my parents, the invectiveness and cruelty of the priests, 
the strangeness of all my companions, what a sign and 
wonder they made of me; but, above all, that great cross 
of resisting and \yatching against my own inward vain 

71 



WILLIAM PENN 

affections and thoughts, . . . and the snares and pitfalls 
laid for my feet in every path, etc. 

This might not be believed to have been uttered by the 
man who afterward framed the great law of Pennsylvania. 
It is a strange melange of the mysticism of Saltmarsh and 
the rant of Fox. Yet there can be no doubt that Penn was 
perfectly sincere in it, or that his words — almost frenzied 
as they might seem at this distance — really failed to blazon 
forth the glow that filled his imagination. Glow of what? 
Spiritualists alone can answer. No one who has never 
fallen under that weird spell, that mysterious psychological 
spasm that Methodists commonly describe as "the power," 
can form the remotest conception of it. 

The author has seen men and women at revivals pass 
utterly beyond self-control, give voice to bursts of eloquence 
they would never dream of in normal moments, and then 
fall into mental stupor or muscular convulsion from which 
the most heroic application of medical skill was required 
to rescue them. In some cases when the patients came to 
their senses they had not the least recollection of the visions 
of their trance. In a few cases dementia supervened. It 
may be a serious question whether such phenomena are not 
always a fitter subject for the neurologist than for the the- 
ologian. But it seems indisputable that, while under the 
influence of Thomas Loe, William Penn had what old-fash- 
ioned Methodists call "the power." 

His new-found convincement of faith had not long to 
wait for the "crown of martyrdom." A few days after 
Thomas Loe had converted him, Penn attended a meeting 

72 



UNDER DISPLEASURE 

of Friends at the house of a shopkeeper. A drunken sol- 
dier came in and proceeded to disturb the assembly. Penn, 
a stalwart man of twenty-four, seized the soldier and was 
about to throw him out, when other Quakers interfered, 
told Penn that physical violence was contrary to their 
tenets, and induced him to let the soldier alone. The latter 
then went to a magistrate, lodged a complaint, and a force 
was sent which broke up the meeting and arrested several 
of the principal Quakers, including Penn, and they were 
put in jail. Penn at once wrote a letter to the Lord Presi- 
dent of Munster, the Earl of Orrery. This letter was an 
able review of the laws and orders under which the magis- 
trate had acted. It summed up as follows : 

I leave your lordship to judge whether that proclama- 
tion (that of 1660) relates to this concernment; that which 
was only designed to suppress Fifth Monarchy murderers. 
And since the King's Lord Lieutenant and yourself are 
fully persuaded the intention of these called Quakers by 
their meetings was really the service of God, and you have 
virtually repealed that other law [meaning the first Con- 
venticle Act] by a long continuance of freedom, I hope 
your lordship will not now begin an unwonted severity by 
suffering any one to indulge so much malice with his near- 
est neighbors; but that there may be a speedy releasement 
of all to attend their honest callings and the enjoyment of 
their families. Though to dissent from a national system 
imposed by authority renders men heretics in the eyes of 
some, yet I dare believe your lordship is better read in 
reason and theology than to subscribe a maxim so vulgar 
and untrue. It is not long since you were a solicitor for 
the liberty I now crave,* when you concluded there was 

* Lord Orrery had been imprisoned by Cromwell under the Common- 
wealth. 

73 



WILLIAM PENN 

no way so effectual to improve this country as to dispense 
freedom in relation to conscience. 

A curious feature of this petition is the use of the ordi- 
nary "you," "your," etc., instead of the Quaker "thee" 
and "thou." But Penn was at that date the merest neo- 
phyte in the external observances of Foxism. However, 
the petition immediately caused the release of Penn and 
his "fellow martyrs." 

As soon as he was free again Penn was summoned to 
England by his father, who had learned with despair of the 
** relapse into Quakerism." 

Harvey, in his manuscript, records that Penn sailed from 
Cork to Bristol, and at the latter place "attended Friends' 
meetings for strengthening of the faith to meet the re- 
proachings and tryals he knew his father would put upon 
him." 

At last he arrived home and met his father. The ad- 
miral was confined to the house with acute gout and was 
unable to walk, though he could sit up in an easy chair. 
There are various accounts of the interview, but they sub- 
stantially agree upon the following details : 

Young Penn frankly said he was finally and perma- 
nently converted to Quakerism. They then discussed its 
various tenets, spiritual beliefs, and outward observances. 
The admiral, albeit then a State Churchman, had always 
cherished liberal views. On questions of religion and con- 
science he was, for that age at least, a pronounced free- 
thinker. After a long discussion with his son, he declared 
that, so far as spiritual doctrine was concerned, he could 

74 



UNDER DISPLEASURE 

tolerate all the Quaker beliefs except that which denied the 
right of physical self-defense, and at the same time refused 
the obligation of manliness that necessarily pertained to it. 
As for outward forms and observances, he could endure 
all except those which denied the virtue of common courtesy 
and made ordinary politeness a sin in the sight of God. He 
declared that there was nothing in the teachings of Christ 
or of any apostle which prohibited the customary conduct 
of a gentleman, and that no one had ever set up such a 
monstrous doctrine until the advent of George Fox. How- 
ever, he was willing to even ignore the "non-combatant 
canon," folly though it might be, if his son conscientiously 
believed that the salvation of his soul depended upon ad- 
herence to it. But he would not tolerate boorishness of 
manner or rudeness of personal behavior, such as the silly 
hat worship and the coarse vulgarity of "thee" and 
"thou," which George Fox considered the pillar of faith 
and the heart's core of his creed, the central dogma of 
his alleged "direct revelation from God." 

"Theeing" and "thouing," he argued, reduced society 
at large to the status of servants or menials, because it 
was to such and such only that those forms of the second 
personal pronoun were addressed. Young Penn rejoined 
that it was the "will of God"; but the admiral compelled 
him to admit that the only authority for that was the alleged 
special revelation to Fox which rested on the unsupported 
assertion of Fox himself. Finally the admiral said : 

You may "thee" and "thou" whomsoever you please 
except the King, the Duke of York, and myself. As for 
your hat, you can worship it to your heart's content and 

75 



WILLIAM PENN 

be as boorish with it as you please, except iu the house of 
your father, who is a gentleman, and in the presence of 
the King and the Duke of York, your sovereign and his 
heir apparent. On all else, which may be spiritual and of 
the inner conscience, I yield. But on these things, which 
are affairs of outward gentleness and decency, I will stand ! 

Upon this young Penn desired time for prayer and 
communion with God. The admiral suggested that when 
a belief or faith was firmly established in a man's con- 
science deliberation ought not to be needed in arriving at a 
judgment based upon it. However, the yoimg man took 
his time and reserved his decision until the next day. As 
a result of about twenty-four hours of prayer and divine 
communion, William Penn informed his father that he 
could not conscientiously remove his hat or address the 
word "you" to any individual. 

It is doubtless a historical misfortune that, with a single 
exception, all accounts, recollections, and biographies of 
William Penn written in his own period or a century and 
a half thereafter, were by Quakers; who — with a saving 
clause in favor of Clarkson (at the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century) — convert their books into Quaker tracts and 
Penn's career into a sort of apostolic succession to George 
Fox. This is natural enough. Though the sect is at this 
writing (1903) two hundred and sixty years old, it has 
never produced a man who made any permanent impress 
upon human affairs or accomplished anything worth endur- 
ing record except William Penn. Fortunately he was great 
enough to monopolize the earthly grandeur of a sect never 
very large itself, and his life glorifies the sect far more than 

76 



UNDER DISPLEASURE 

sectarian biographers can exalt him. All the Quaker wri- 
ters say that Admiral Pcnn expelled William from his house 
again on this occasion, and some of them declare that he 
also began proceedings to disinherit him. 

Granville Penn, in his Life of Admiral Penn, says noth- 
ing of this. He dismisses the whole episode as ' ' a warm de- 
bate, resulting in temporary estrangement." And his sub- 
sequent references to William Penn indicate that, during 
the two years of life yet remaining to the admiral, his house 
was the home of his son, though the latter seldom availed 
himself of its privileges. In fact, William Penn spent that 
two years — as he did the seven or eight next ensuing — in 
travels up and down as an itinerant exhorter or as a 
polemical tract-writer in jail. 

That Sir William Penn mourned what he viewed as the 
degeneracy of his son may be true. Harvey records him 
as reproaching his son in these words: "What can you 
think of yourself, after being so well-born and carefully 
trained up in learning and courtly accomplishments to fit 
you for the place of ambassador at a foreign court or min- 
ister of the Government at home, that you should sink all 
in a Quaker preacher and make your association of prefer- 
ence with outcasts ! ' ' 

Whether Sir William employed such language or not, 
the feeling so expressed was natural enough — in the seven- 
teenth century at least. But there is not the least authority 
for the disinheritance story. Sir William died in Septem- 
ber, 1670, in the old home at Wanstead, and his son William 
succeeded to all his estate by the law of primogeniture with- 
out let or hindrance. 

77 



WILLIAM PENN 

In the second edition of Penn's best theological work,* 
published some years after the admiral's death, he gives a 
touching account of that event which indicates perfect 
reconciliation between them. But William Penn could 
not inherit the baronetcy at that time, had it been heredi- 
tary, because such succession involved an oath of fealty to 
the Crown which his devotion to the whims of Fox would 
have forbidden him to make. 

However, the succession to the estate gave him command 
of an income of about 1,600 guineas a year — or say, $8,000 
— which the vastly greater purchasing power of money in 
those days made equivalent to three times that sum now. 
Besides this, it made him a creditor of the King to the 
amount of about £16,000, with considerable accumulated 
interest; an inheritance destined to be the basis of the real, 
practical greatness he soon afterward attained as a states- 
man, lawgiver, and human benefactor; when, in a lucid 
interval, he temporarily quit Quaker preaching to found 
an American commonwealth. 

This relation of creditor to the King may be succinctly 
explained : Between the parsimony of Parliament and the 
extravagance of the King in those days, Charles II was 
always poor in purse and a constant borrower. He bor- 
rowed of all whom his royal favor could convert into money- 
makers and money-lenders, from prince to pawnbroker; 
from minister of Government to maker of periwigs, 
from admiral to apple-vender. He helped Admiral 
Penn to make prize money, in order that he might 
borrow from the admiral ashore the guilders the admiral 
* No Cross, No Crown. 

78 



UNDER DISPLEASURE 

afloat had wrung from the defeated Dutch. However, 
Charles was honest and would pay his debts when he could. 
When he could not pay he would borrow more. In the 
case of Admiral Penn, he had borrowed more and paid noth- 
ing. By that means — providential as it turned out — he 
owed the dying admiral £16,000, with accumulated inter- 
est, and he paid the debt to the admiral's heir with Penn- 
sylvania. 



79 



CHAPTER IV 

1668-1G78 

QUAKER PREACHER AND FOUNDER OP 
WEST JERSEY 



CHAPTER IV 

16G8-1678 
QUAKER PREACHER AND FOUNDER OF WEST JERSEY 

This, as remarked at the outset, is a secular and not a 
spiritual, a temporal and not a religious, history of William 
Penn; the story of his statesmanship, not of his sectarian- 
ism. From this view-point, and in pursuit of this purpose, 
his life from 1668 to 1678 may be quickly reviewed. Those 
years he spent in rambling up and down England and the 
Continent, now preaching Quakerism, now printing Quaker 
tracts, and again as a martyr in Newgate or the Tower. Of 
his preaching little can be said that would be either instruc- 
tive or even interesting to those who read by the electric 
lights of this material age. Of his printing, even less. 

As to the volume of his preaching or the number of his 
sermons there is no exact record; but their name was 
myriad. As to his authorship, twentj^-six books are extant ; 
they require little review beyond the remark that no Quaker 
library is complete without them^ — and they are seldom 
found in any other. Two of them, however, may be viewed 
as possessing some permanent historical value not wholly 
sectarian. They are The Present Interest of England Con- 
sidered and The Peace of Europe. The first named is a 
treatise on religious toleration, a terse history of religious 

83 



WILLIAM PENN 

persecution, and an argument in favor of universal liberty 
of conscience, from the view-point of national self-interest 
alone. It aboimds in truisms which, though always trite, 
are ever new. Its literary execution leaves much to be de- 
sired, but in the main it must stand as a fair effort to apply 
sound religious principles in progressive political practise 
for the common weal and the general betterment of worldly 
conditions. 

The second named is a labored treatise against war and 
in favor of arbitration. In this Penn has some claim to 
originality of conception. So far as our reading enables 
us to judge, he originated the idea that nations might agree 
upon a system whereby issues commonly referred to arbi- 
tration of the sword might be adjusted by international 
litigation. In his Peace of Europe Penn brings out this 
idea quite crudely, but as intelligibly as any one has since 
advocated it. The essence of his theory was a sort of inter- 
national Quakerism, and later-day dreamers of the mil- 
lennium have not improved upon his logic. The experiment 
of "arbitration between nations" has, indeed, been tried 
since Penn's day; but the result has invariably been that 
the nation having all the cunning and none of the right 
cheats the eye-teeth out of the nation that has all the right 
and none of the cunning. The trouble is wholly that of 
human nature. No nation probably would offer to "arbi- 
trate" a cause that seemed worth fighting for. This is as 
fundamentally true as that no nation ever has adopted or 
ever will adopt the Quaker doctrine of absolute non-com- 
batantism. 

The full title of Penn's work is An Essay toward the 

84 



FOUNDER OF WEST JERSEY 

Present and Future Peace of Europe. After formulating 
an elaborate plan for creating an "International Court of 
Arbitration," Penn provides that "its judgment should be 
made so binding that, if any government offer its case for 
decision and do not then abide by it, the other governments 
parties to the tribunal should compel it." These words 
have a familiar sound. They seem quite as much like the 
nineteenth century as the seventeenth; and they might as 
well be dated from "Boston" as from " Worminghurst. " 
The theory was no more Utopian then than now. But riper 
experience among nations, as well as among individuals, has 
made ideas appear ludicrous now that were only novel then. 

With these two exceptions, Penn 's voluminous literature 
was as ephemeral as the spiritual polemics of the century 
in which it appeared. Its most notable peculiarity from 
the purely literary view-point was its total lack of settled 
or sustained style. In the best of his theological books — 
No Cross, No Crown — we find abundant traces of Salt- 
marsh, or of efforts to imitate his inimitable mysticism. 
In the worst of them — The Sandy Foundation Shaken — 
may be found echoes of the rugged and verbose speech of 
Fox. Penn never seemed able to cultivate a style of his 
own in theological writing. But whenever he touched upon 
practical questions of law, administration, or statecraft he 
wrote smoothly, clearly, and often masterfully. 

During this period occurred Penn's marriage with Guli- 
elma Maria Springett in ]\Iay, 1672. She was the daughter 
of Colonel Sir William Springett, who died during the siege 
of Arundel Castle, from the reopening of a wound received 
at Naseby. He was the youngest officer of his grade in 

85 



WILLIAM PENN 

Cromwell 's army, aud his daughter was born three months 
after his death. His widow married Isaac Penington be- 
fore Gulielraa was two years old. Penington was the son 
and heir of the famous alderman of London in Cromwell's 
time, sturdiest of Puritans and stanchest of Roundheads. 
The doughty alderman had quelled Westminster riots, 
arrested "seditious bishops," handed into Parliament the 
Monster Petition of the People to the Commons demanding 
that justice be meted out to the deposed King, and was a 
member of the high court of justice ordained for the 
King's trial. His son Isaac was of different mold. When 
the alderman died Isaac inherited his comfortable estate 
of Chalfont St. Peters, in Buckinghamshire, and soon after- 
ward became, like Penn, a Quaker preacher. 

A miniature or small portrait of Miss Springett, painted 
during Penn's courtship, shows her to have been remark- 
ably beautiful. Her life indicates rich endowment of do- 
mestic virtues and strength of character. Such of her let- 
ters as have been preserved exhibit a fertile and highly 
trained intellect together with perfect constancy of purpose 
and amiability of disposition. 

The atmosphere of the Penington home in which she 
had been reared was pure, wholesome, and devout. Her 
principal tutor was Thomas Ellwood, a classical scholar, 
who for a long time enjoyed the rare opportunities of 
culture afforded by the station of amanuensis and reader 
to Milton in his blindness. Miss Springett herself had 
often seen and conversed with the great Puritan poet dur- 
ing her girlhood while he lived in a neighboring village of 
Buckinghamshire, and one tradition (in Gibson's Life of 

86 



FOUNDER OF WEST JERSEY 

Penn) says that she had written from Milton's dictation 
after he became totally blind. In 1672, when Penn mar- 
ried her, she was past twenty-five, and doubtless had no 
superior among her sex in England for charms of person 
and mind. That she was greatly helpful to her husband 
in the most trying period of his career is abundantly 
attested by his letters to her and others while she lived, and 
by his eloquent and affecting tribute to her memory when 
she died. 

She brought to him not only her own virtues and graces, 
but a substantial property inherited from her father, whose 
only child she was. This was a small but very productive 
estate, and a neat country house at Worminghurst, Sussex, 
and there Penn made his home after the marriage. 

As we have already passed briefly over his religious 
work as preacher and author, so we need not dwell at length 
upon the trials and persecutions to which that work sub- 
jected him. No subject can be so dismal to either writer 
or reader as the annals of religious persecution. 

Whatever may be said of the idiosyncrasies of the Qua- 
kers or the peculiarities of their doctrines and observances, 
they were a harmless people ; they did not disturb the peace, 
they committed no crime ; and the only laws they infringed 
were such outrages upon common humanity as the infamous 
Conventicle Acts and similar statutes conceived in the 
bigotry, enacted in the intolerance and executed in the 
cowardly cruelty of the Episcopal Church of England two 
hundred years ago ; laws which were in themselves crimes, 
and the enforcement of which, in a more enlightened age, 
would be viewed as a felony. The complete account of 

87 



WILLIAM PENN 

Penn's "trial" at Old Bailey on an indictment accusing 
him of "riotous conduct" for "preaching in Grace Street 
Church" would form an interesting chapter in the history 
of the jury system if other demands upon our space did not 
exclude it. Suffice to say here that it was among the most 
important cases on record, involving as it did the last 
attempt ever made by an English judge to terrorize a jury 
with a view to extort from them a verdict contrary to the 
facts, the law, and their own oaths. 

The jury declared Penn not guilty, after the court had 
imprisoned them forty-eight hours without food or light 
in the vain effort to make them convict the accused. And 
then, after they persisted in rendering a verdict of not 
guilty, fined them forty shillings each and sent them to 
Newgate prison along with the defendant they had declared 
innocent. This farce of a trial has handed down the names 
of Samuel Starling, Mayor of London, and John Howell, 
Kecorder of Old Bailej^, to a disgusting obloquy and an 
unspeakable infamy that must endure so long as men who 
talk the English language shall love justice and hate 
despotism. It has consigned them to an immortal shame 
as much meaner and more despicable than that of Jef- 
feries, as his judicial crimes were greater in enormity than 
theirs. 

From this imprisonment, and subsequently from an in- 
carceration in the Tower under conditions of almost equal 
atrocity, Penn was liberated by the intervention of the King, 
at the instance of the Earl of Arlington in one case and of 
the Duke of York in the other. But the persecutions Penn 
suffered were only a single case in thousands during that 

88 



FOUNDEK OF WEST JERSEY 

period. The Quakers kept careful and accurate records of 
their sufferings for conscience sake. These records show 
that in a single twelvemonth about three thousand were 
imprisoned or punished in the pillory or publicly flogged 
through the streets ; and this in most cases by utter mockery 
of trial, when pretense was made of trial at all. And the 
record shows also that over three hundred died in prison or 
from the effects of hardships and privations suft'ered there. 
This was the year following the revision of the Conventicle 
Acts by which provision was made for arrest, imprison- 
ment, and fines upon information and without even the 
pretense of jury trial. The Church of England had at- 
tained complete control of the House of Commons, and its 
first use of that control was to pass the most infamous acts 
for promotion of sacerdotal despotism and sectarian felony 
that ever blotted the statutes of England. 

But the disease wrought its own cure. The enormities 
committed by the Episcopal Church and its servile minions 
were so appalling that the good-natured King intervened 
by order in Council, the effect of which was to compel all 
such cases to be regularly tried, with right of appeal, 
which, though it did not wholly stop the persecution, quite 
distinctly curtailed the powers of zealot constables and bigot 
magistrates. Among other things, the King required the 
bishops to grant licenses to non-conformist clergymen un- 
der certain conditions easily fulfilled. Such licenses pro- 
vided that preaching should not be disturbed, and in other 
ways protected the licentiates from persecution. In some 
cases arrests were made in spite of these licenses, but the 
constables themselves came to grief, together with the mag- 

89 



WILLIAM PENN 

istrates who issued the process. However, the story is too 
long and its details are too dismal for these pages. 

Well may the historian pass them over. But it is not 
so easy to refrain from the inevitable deduction that the 
Church of England in the seventeenth century was fit suc- 
cessor to the Church of Rome in the sixteenth. It is not easy 
to repress the fact that the Catholic butchers of Bloody 
Mary's time had little to repent of in excess of the blind 
bigotry and savage intolerance of the Church of England or 
the brutal and cowardly cruelty of its prelates, priests, and 
prebendaries two hundred years ago. These horrors fol- 
lowed naturally in the train of an Established Church. 
Take any sect or creed, munify it by statute and support it 
by taxation, and you will have provided for enormities in 
the name of religion. A creed set up by law and main- 
tained by public money must always add human cupidity 
to sectarian zeal, thereby stifling what should be the noblest 
of motives in the basest of vices. It was knowledge of this 
fundamental truth that impelled the framers of our institu- 
tions to prohibit a State Church and to make all sects equal 
before the law. The Church of England still exists as an 
"establishment." But it is a comparatively harmless an- 
achronism. It still plunders the English treasury in a small 
way; but, so far as real power is concerned, it is held in 
subjection by forces of public opinion that stand ready to 
overwhelm it should it offer the slightest symptom of re- 
lapse into its former crimes. 

In 1674 Penn had reached the age of thirty. He had 
given no signs of purpose or ambition to be anything else 
than an itinerant Quaker preacher and tract- writer. The 

90 



FOUNDER OF WEST JERSEY 

fortune inherited from his father, coupled with that which 
his marriage brought him, was sufficient to release him from 
the hard task of earning a livelihood. He was not avari- 
cious, and, considering the extent of his income, lived 
frugally. So far as concerned the expenses of himself and 
his family, he should have had a good annual surplus. But 
he did not. His income was expended as fast as it accrued 
— and often a little faster. This was due to his benefices 
toward his needy brethren. 

With few exceptions the early Quakers were people of 
humble station and small means, mostly shopkeepers or 
artisans, depending on personal industry for a living. 
Necessarily, fines and imprisonment bore heavily upon 
them, reducing many to penury. These unfortunates Will- 
iam Penn was always ready to help with his last farthing, 
and when he had no ready resource of his own at hand he 
would exhaust his credit borrowing for their benefit. These 
outlays and the expenses of his own missionary work, to- 
gether with the cost of his numerous publications, kept his 
purse constantly drained.* Moreover, while he was so 
zealous in his ministry of Quakerism his income itself fell 
away. Bad crops in Ireland made his Irish tenants fall 
into arrears. Penn had not the heart — or maybe, and more 

* Penn did not sell his books. He considered them part of his ministry. 
Not satisfied with serving the Lord by word of mouth, he served Him also 
in type. Therefore he paid the printer's bills, and then gave the books 
free and broadcast to whomsoever might wish to read them. Possibly 
there would not have been much sale for them when printed. But the 
author of this little book has seen a copy of the original edition of No 
Cross, No Crown, as written in the Tower (160!)), with Peun's autograph 
on the fly-leaf, sold at a sale of rare books in London for forty-five 
guineas ! Perhaps it had, like the best vintages, " improved with age." 

91 



WILLIAM PENN 

likely, he had too much heart — to distrain them. He 
evicted uo tenant. Whenever compromise could be made 
it was done and the tenant paid whatsoever he could — or 
said he could — and Penn charged the balance to profit 
and loss. 

After a few years he began to be straitened for funds. 
By the end of 1677 his main reliance had come to be the 
Springett estate of Worminghurst, which his wife brought 
to him. But he still held the debt of £16,000 or so that 
Charles II owed to his father. 

During the period just referred to he had but once, so 
far as record shows, taken active part in worldly affairs. 
That was in 1674-75. When the Dutch colony of New 
Amsterdam was conquered in 1664 and became New York, 
that part of the province lying between the Hudson and the 
Delaware Rivers was granted or conveyed by the Duke of 
York to Earl Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. The 
boundaries of this tract were not well defined, but generally 
speaking it included all the present State of New Jersey 
north of a line drawn from Staten Island southwest to the 
confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. No set- 
tlements of any importance had been made in this tract 
prior to 1664. It was inhabited by Indians, and the only 
white people found within its borders were a few Dutch 
traders from New Amsterdam. But by 1675 a few settle- 
ments had been made on the west side of the region, chief 
among which was a little trading-post on the left bank of 
the Delaware, then known as New Beverly.* 

Sir George Carteret sold his half of the territory to John 
* Now Burlington, N. J. 

92 



FOUNDER OF WEST JERSEY 

Fenwick, in trust for Edward Byllinge, both of whom 
were Quakers. Fenwick and Byllinge quarreled about 
their joint possession, much to the scandal of the Society 
of Friends, who declared them "covetous and carnally 
minded." The Quakers desired above all things to avoid 
lawsuits, which, they said, "put it in the mouths of the un- 
godly to revile them for the hankerings of the flesh after 
the things of this world ! ' ' 

The dispute between Fenwick and Byllinge became so 
acute that nothing short of an appeal to Westminster Hall 
seemed possible. To avoid such scandal the matter was 
taken up in the church. Fenwick and Byllinge were "dis- 
ciplined," and finally William Penn was chosen arbitrator. 
He made a sort of compromise, by which Fenwick received 
1,000 guineas cash and one-tenth of the territory. Byllinge 
received the rest of the land. He was, however, insolvent, 
and Penn, wdth two others, were chosen trustees for Byl- 
linge 's creditors under an assignment. Fenwick at first 
refused to accept the award. Penn wrote to him : 

It behooveth me, sore against my wish, to tell thee, John 
Fenwick, that the present difference between thee and Ed- 
ward Byllinge fills the hearts of Friends with grief, and 
with a resolution to take into consideration and make a 
public denial of the person that offers violence to the award 
made, or that will not end the dispute without bringing it 
upon the public stage. God, the Righteous Judge, will visit 
him that standeth out ! . . . Opprest as I am with business, 
I will find an afternoon to-morrow or next day to determine 
and so prevent the mischief that will certainly follow 
divulging it in Westminster Hall. Let me know by the 
bearer thy mind. Oh ! John, let truth and the honor of it 

93 



WILLIAM PENN 

in this day prevail. Woe to him that causeth offense. I 
am an impartial man. 

Fenwick seems to have heeded these plain threats of 
"church discipline." Though he still "stood out" for a 
few weeks, he ultimately acquiesced in Penn's award and 
deeded nine-tenths of the land to the trustees of the Byl- 
linge creditors. Penn's cotrustees were unable to give the 
time required and withdrew from active connection with 
the trust, leaving the management of the Byllinge territory 
wholly in Penn's hands. For two years or more little was 
done beyond laying the foundation of a new colony. About 
a hundred families, mostly Quakers, were aided to cross the 
ocean. The little trading-post of New Beverly was made 
the nucleus of a permanent settlement and renamed 
"Bridlington," afterward changed to Burlington. The 
colony was named West Jersey. 

In the summer of 1677 Penn made a tour on the Con- 
tinent of Europe, visiting Holland and the Palatinate, 
which two years before had been ravaged by Turenne's 
army. During this journey he visited the Princess Pala- 
tine and William of Orange, then Stadtholder of Holland. 
The latter was engaged in war with Louis XIV, which 
ended the next year in the peace of Nymwegen. Prince 
William had just married Princess Mary, daughter of the 
Duke of York. Mary shared her father's regard for Ad- 
miral Penn, and, like him, was disposed to transfer the 
good-will to his son. William of Orange also took a fancy 
to Penn, whose maternal grandfather, John Jasper, of 
Rotterdam, had befriended him in his boyhood. William, 

94 



FOUNDER OF WEST JERSEY 

however, did not like the Quakers — or at all events he had 
no respect for the non-combatant doctrine they professed. 
He is recorded by Dr. Montanus, in Leven van Willem III, 
as saying to Penn that he "believed in equal toleration 
of all creeds, except the Catholic, whose cardinal doctrine 
was the duty of murdering heretics, and the Quakers, who 
held cowardice to be a prime article of Christian faith ! ' ' 
Prince William said he did not believe in persecuting any 
one. But he would disqualify Catholics from holding any 
power in the state because they held that an oath to sup- 
port a Protestant government was not binding; and he 
would also exclude Quakers from office because no man 
ought to have any share in a government he was not willing 
to defend against aggression. He believed that much of 
the persecution suffered by the Quakers was due to the 
contempt in which all other creeds held them, because of 
their pusillanimous peace doctrine. 

William Penn returned from this trip filled with new 
aspirations. There is no positive evidence that the project 
of founding a free-conscience colony in the New World 
was suggested to him, but his first acts after he returned to 
England tended to that end. In Biographic des Femmes 
Celebres, the statement is given that the Princess Palatine 
suggested such a scheme to Penn while he was her guest 
at Heervorden in 1677. Penn, however, does not men- 
tion anything of the kind in his Journal of that year, which 
was quite copious and of which many pages are devoted 
to the Princess Palatine. 

Be this as it may, Penn at once began to prepare a 
scheme of government for the new colony, of which he was 

95 



WILLIAM PENN 

not proprietor but only trustee. At this point a new and, 
it would seem, an unexpected view of Penn 's character con- 
fronts us. For the moment at least he had dropped the 
role of itinerant Quaker preacher to assume that of the 
universal statesman; ceased, at least temporarily, the wri- 
ting of Quaker tracts, and begun to write fundamental laws ; 
stopped echoing the whims, the chimeras, and the vagaries 
of George Fox in theology, and begun his own original 
utterance of imperishable truths in the constitution of 
human self-government. 

This was in 1677-78. William Penn was thirty-three 
years old. As we have already intimated, his career up 
to the age of thirty had been wholly that of student, theo- 
logian, and sectarian. The time now under consideration 
may be described as the third year of his awakening to the 
great fact that there were such things as temporal interests 
in this world; that God made the earth for other purposes 
than an arena for sectarian polemics, and that there was 
really something for men to do besides preach and write 
tracts. 

It is, perhaps, quite as well for mankind that Penn 
made these temporal discoveries or woke up to these ma- 
terial facts at a somewhat mature age. It is possible that, 
had these practical revelations reached him ten years sooner, 
he might have tried to strain them through the mysticism 
of Saltmarsh or measure them by the standard of Fox. 

At any rate, his very first effort as a lawgiver showed 
that he had grasped at least one great truth, namely, that 
while a man might be Quaker to-day and statesman to- 
morrow, he could not be both on the same day. 

96 



FOUNDER OF WEST JERSEY 

Penn drew up, in his own handwriting, a code for the 
new colony. He called it A Preamble of Concessions. 
The latter word was used because it would have to be ap- 
proved by the King in Council. Charles II was a humane 
man and a clever fellow personally, but Penn knew him 
and his entourage well enough to know that he would 
approve under the title of "royal concessions" a great 
many things which he would not yield as popular rights. 
That was a way the Stuarts had. For example, Charles I 
wanted to "concede" several things to Parliament. In 
the end he yielded his head to Oliver Cromwell. James II 
afterward was willing to "concede" universal toleration, 
etc., on his own terms. He yielded his crown and throne 
to William of Orange on no terms whatever but those of 
headlong flight. 

However, Penn had now to deal with a Stuart, and so 
he called his pioneer declaration of fundamental and im- 
perishable principles "royal concessions." The whole cor- 
poration of diplomatists from Nicolo di Bernardo Machia- 
velli to Benjamin Disraeli could not have been more 
adroit. 

The King approved it. There were some things in this 
scheme of "royal concessions" that would never do in 
England — the Merry Monarch thought — but almost any- 
thing would do in West Jersey. 

It was a simple code. Yet it was, crudely, the greatest 

code in popular government that has fallen from the pen 

of mortal man. It was the pioneer of all codes that now 

express, under various conditions and in diverse forms, the 

essential doctrine of self-government, "of the people, by 
8 97 



WILLIAM PENN 

the people, and for the people." And of this Penn was 
pioneer. 

The boundary between East Jersey, which Carteret 
retained, and West Jersey, which he conveyed to Byllinge, 
was rather indefinite. By the terms of the transfer it was 
"a line drawn from the east of Little Egg Harbor straight 
north through the country to the utmost branch of Dela- 
ware River." However, the main purpose was to leave 
to Carteret the settlements along the west side of the Hud- 
son and the seashore, and to give Byllinge the east bank 
of the Delaware. To this domain Fenwick added the 
present counties of Salem and Cumberland, which he 
bought from the Indians for merchandise valued at about 
seventy-four guineas. 

It does not seem necessary to introduce here the full 
text of the constitution Penn framed for the free-conscience 
colony of West Jersey. In brief, its main provisions were : 

1. Universal and unqualified suffrage. 

2. Perfect freedom of conscience and complete religious 
equality before the law. (It is noteworthy that the word 
"equality" was used, not "toleration.") 

3. A governing assembly to be chosen by ballot, any 
voter being eligible; pay in actual session one shilling 
per diem. 

4. An executive commission of ten members to be ap- 
pointed by the assembly. 

5. Magistrates and constables to be elected by the people 
of each of the magisterial districts into which the assembly 
might from time to time subdivide the colony. 

6. No sentence in criminal eases without trial by jury, 

98 



FOUNDER OF WEST JERSEY 

except minor forms of disorderly conduct such as drunk- 
enness, the use of riotous or obscene language, etc., which 
might be corrected by the magistrate on prima facie evi- 
dence; and all cases might be appealed to the executive 
council on points of law. 

7. No judgment in civil cases involving over five shil- 
lings, without verdict of a jury, unless the parties should 
agree to trial before a magistrate. 

8. Additional articles to be submitted to popular vote, 
but no article to be adopted in conflict with the foregoing. 

9. Summary: All and every person in the province 
shall, by the help of the Lord and these fundamentals, be 
forever free from oppression and slavery. 

In his letter forwarding the draft of these "conces- 
sions" (which were brought over by John Fenwick) Peun 
said : 

In the fear of the Lord and in true sense of his Divine 
Will we try here to lay foundations for after ages to un- 
derstand liberty as Christians and as men, that they may 
not be brought into bondage but by their own consent. We 
put all power in the people. 

This was, of course, an absolute democracy, the climax 
of home rule. 

Among Penn's most intimate friends at this time were 
John Locke and Algernon Sidney, the one leading the lib- 
eral philosophy, the other the advanced statesmanship of 
the period. But William Penn went ahead of both. 
Locke had his doubts about admitting papists to a share in 
the government. He feared it might be made a loophole 
for the introduction of French influence. The indefatiga- 



WILLIAM PENN 

ble Jesuits he thought might easily make their way from 
Canada into West Jersey, or from the Catholic colony of 
Maryland. Even if they could not subvert the institu- 
tions, they would manage to keep the colony itself in tur- 
moil, causing scandal and distrust on the part of the home 
Government. Less than ten years prior to the time under 
consideration Locke had drawn up, at the request of the 
Earl of Shaftesbury, a charter for Carolina. This charter 
created a "peerage" of eight men — to begin with — whose 
powers were to be hereditary and whose functions were 
modeled after the House of Lords. Two-fifths of all the 
land in the colony was to be set apart as estates for the 
hereditary nobility. The other three-fifths might be ac- 
quired by the common people. Representatives or "mem- 
bers of the Commons ' ' were to be chosen by the people and 
these, eoordinately with the hereditary "peers," were to 
form a colonial parliament. To these Lord Shaftesbury 
added an article providing for appointment of a governor 
by the Crown, but without veto power, and an article 
making the Church of England the established religion — 
this last against Locke's protest. For the rest there was 
to be entire freedom of conscience and "toleration" — not 
as Penn provided, "equality" — of all religious faiths. 

This was, of course, a limited aristocracy not essentiallj'- 
differing from the system in England itself. 

Clearly Penn's ideas of liberty were more advanced 
than those of Locke. Possibly he legislated in advance of 
the age in which he lived. Subsequent events might be 
construed to argue in that direction. 

Sidney agreed with Penn's ideas as far as they went, 

100 



FOUNDS II OF WEST JERSEY 

But he distrusted what he called the ' ' hydra-headed execu- 
tive of ten persons, all having equal power and equal lack 
of responsibility." He contended that no scheme of gov- 
ernment would be found practicable that did not possess a 
single executive head, visible, tangible, and responsible. 
He also condemned Penn's total lack of provision for de- 
fense, saying, among other things, that no body of men 
could govern themselves unless able and willing to defend 
themselves. 

It is noteworthy that the two elements of Peun 's scheme 
which Algernon Sidney disapproved were the two which 
embodied the essence of Foxite Quakerism — the non-com- 
batant canon and the "hydra-headed executive." The 
latter was a clear concession to Fox's fundamental whim 
that there ought to be no "single high dignitary." The 
vesting of executive power in a "Council of Ten" had the 
flavor of a Quaker church committee. As a matter of fact, 
this fault wrought its own cure, for the Council of Ten, af- 
ter a very brief experience, delegated its practical authority 
to a chairman, who became an individual executive de facto 
if not de jure. 

But the cure was not radical or permanent. And there 
was no cure for the lack of defense, or refusal to provide 
for it. No matter how just and right Penn's scheme of 
religious equality and popular home rule by universal 
suffrage might be, the effort to incorporate with it two dis- 
tinctively Quaker whims proved fatal. Penn's form of 
government for West Jersey endured a quarter of a century 
— 1677 to 1702. Then upon the ontbreak of what we 
usually call "Queen Anne's War" in the latter year the 

101 



WILLIAM PENN 

exigencies of public defense compelled the British Govern- 
ment to suppress the Quaker regime, and West Jersey as a 
whole was made a Crown colony with a royal governor and 
council and an elective assembly. Suffrage was limited to 
freeholders, Catholics were disfranchised, and the Church 
of England was favored, though not regularly established 
by statute. The royal governor had the veto power and 
could call or prorogue the assembly at will. 

This review of Penn's connection with West Jersey is 
an essential part of his history. It antedated his founding 
of Pennsylvania by four years. In some things it proved 
a lesson. It taught him at least what ought to be avoided. 
The ''great law" of Pennsylvania, which Pcnn also framed, 
and which the first Assembly adopted at Upland (now 
Chester) in 1682, was more practical and less Quakerish 
than the original West Jersey "concessions" of 1677. 

Though Penn was the real founder of West Jersey be- 
fore he founded Pennsylvania, he had no personal interest 
in the province and derived no profit from it except his 
fee as trustee, which was small. But he spent a good deal 
of his own money aiding his persecuted brethren to migrate 
from England to the new land of peace and promise. What 
was more important than all else, it is beyond question that 
Penn's experience with West Jersey led him to the meas- 
ures Avhich culminated in the great achievement upon which 
his fame rests. 

In 1679 Penn made his first appearance on the public 
stage as a politician. Algernon Sidney was the Liberal can- 
didate for the House of Commons from Guildford. Though 
Sidney was not a Quaker, but a Puritan, he was an ad- 

102 



FOUNDER OF WEST JERSEY 

vanced Liberal, and he and Penn agreed on that point if on 
no other. Penn "stumped the borough" for Sidney and 
wrote "campaign documents" advocating his election. 
He was elected, but the House refused to seat him — seat- 
ing instead his defeated rival, Colonel Delamahoy, on a 
technicality. Sidney then stood again for Bramber — a 
good deal of a rotten borough — was again elected, and again 
refused the seat by the House. This treatment of his friend 
discouraged Penn more than all his own sufferings had 
done. 

"There is no hope in England," he said bitterly. "The 
deaf adder can not be charmed." As if to add insult to 
injury, just about this time the "Popish Plot" of Titus 
Oates's perjury was at its height as a sensation, and the 
Established Church declared the Quakers to be "Jesuits in 
disguise." So hotly was this absurd charge urged that 
Penn found it necessary to have a hearing before the com- 
mittee of the Commons appointed to investigate it. In- 
deed, the committee heard him twice. His sole aim was to 
show the ridiculous fallacy and cruel imposture of trying 
to connect the Society of Friends with papal intrigues. 
The tenor of his addresses to the committee may be inferred 
from the conclusion of the second and last one : 

"We choose no suffering, for God knows how much we 
have suffered and how many families are reduced to pov- 
erty by it. We think ourselves a useful people; yet, if 
we must suffer, let us suffer not as Popish recusants but as 
Protestant dissenters. 

Penn seems to have carried his point with the com- 
mittee, for the clause he advocated was incorporated in the 

103 



WILLIAM PENN 

bill to suppress popish plots as it passed the Commons ; but 
the King prorogued Parliament before it could be consid- 
ered in the Lords and the measure fell between the two 
houses. 



104 



CHAPTER V 

1680 

THE PENNSYLVANIA CHARTER 



CHAPTER V 

1680 
THE PENNSYLVANIA CHARTER 

Just when the thought of asking the King to pay the 
debt of £16,000 by grant of territory in America first oc- 
curred to William Penn is a question that he himself left 
no data to determine. The records of his contemporaries 
are almost equally silent. The sole inkling we have been 
able to find occurs in Clarke's Life of James II. We have 
already adverted to the friendship which existed between 
that prince, when Duke of York, and Admiral Penn, and 
to the fact that the admiral 's son inherited the duke 's good- 
will. Clarke intimates that William Penn was first em- 
boldened to petition King Charles II for a grant of Ameri- 
can land in payment of the debt, by advice of the Duke of 
York and by the prince 's assurance that he would do every- 
thing in his power to bring about a favorable result. This 
is probably true. The duke was opposed to religious per- 
secution. He had no sympathy with the Established 
Church. He was as much in favor of universal toleration 
as Penn was — only from the opposite extreme, for the duke 
at heart was quite as much Catholic as Penn was Quaker. 
IMoreover, the duke himself was interested in the colonies 
of New York and West Jersey, and naturally desired to 

107 



^•f 



WILLIAM PENN 

see the country contiguous to them developed. Penn's 
efforts to build up West Jersey were beginning to show 
good fruits. Between 1677 and 1680 over three thousand 
emigrants had settled there, mainly under Penn's manage- 
ment or by his advice. The duke thought he could do vastly 
more as the actual head of a new colony than as mere 
trustee for other owners. Penn, on his part, may have 
had misgivings as to the fate his petition would meet if 
addressed to the King with no influence or "backing" be- 
yond the justice of the claim itself. But with the earnest 
support of the Duke of York assured this source of doubt 
might be removed. If the duke did promise Penn his good 
offices he kept it confidential. When Penn sent up his peti- 
tion early in the summer of 1680, it was referred by the 
King to the ' ' Committee of the Privy Council for the Affairs 
of Trade and Plantations. ' ' * 

This committee notified the agent of the Duke of York — 
Sir John Werden — and asked him to report whether the 
tract described in the petition was consistent with the 
boundaries of New York. Sir John, in his reply, objected 
to Penn's proposed southern boundary on the ground that 
all territory west of the Delaware, which had been settled 
by the Swedes and Finns in 163^, and then conquered by 
the Dutch, had been annexed by the latter to New York, 
and was therefore part of that colony when conquered from 
the Dutch by the English in 1664. Therefore, as the whole 
of the conquered Dutch colony had been given to the Duke 
of York, his grant must include the settlements of the 

* A designation changed to " The Lords of Trade and the Colonies " in 
a hiter reign. 

108 



THE PENNSYLVANIA CHARTER 

Swedes aud Finns on the west bank of the Delaware River, 
which extended from the sea to Upland.* For these 
reasons Sir John Werden protested in behalf of the Duke 
of York against the transfer of this territory to Penn. 

The committee referred Sir John's letter to Penn, who 
at once laid it before the Duke of York in person. The 
duke immediately instructed Sir John "to withdraw the 
letter of objection and to inform the committee that his 
Royal Highness commands me to let you know . . . that 
he is very willing Mr. Penn's request may meet with suc- 
cess. . . . And H. R. H. also bids me inform their lord- 
ships that in his opinion questions of exact boundary or 
prior right may be determined upon more particular ex- 
amination and survey of the domain." This would indi- 
cate a prior understanding between the duke and Penn. 

It is a curious fact that, almost alone of all the impor- 
tant documents connected with the grant of Pennsylvania, 
the original petition should not have been preserved. 
Hazard, in his Annals of Pennsylvania, says that ' ' the peti- 
tion existed, in a mutilated state, in 1735. It was then 
adduced in evidence during a trial at law to determine the 
proper boundaries of the possessions actually granted to 
William Penn. As far as the fragment could be made out, 
it recited the royal debt, to the embarrassments caused to 
the heir of Sir William Penn through its non-payment, and 
then humbly prays that his ]\Iajesty, in his compassion for 
the afflicted, will be pleased to grant land in America north 
of some territory, the name of which was defaced, and 
bounded by a river on the west, also left without a name." 
♦Now Chester, Pa., twelve miles below Philadelphiu 
109 



WILLIAM PENN 

The committee of the Privy Council consisted of the 
Duke of Albemarle — son of General Monk, who had restored 
Charles II — the Bishop of London — Henry Compton — with 
Sir Lionel Jenkyns as secretary. The first meeting to con- 
sider Penn's petition was held June 24, 1680. They called 
Penn before them and asked him to explain the geography 
of his proposed grant. 

"To be bounded on the east by the Delaware River," he 
said, as reported in the minutes of the Council, "on the 
south by the grant to Lord Baltimore; to run west as far 
as the latter grant, and northward to the forty-third paral- 
lel of latitude — it being assumed that latitude 40° should 
be the northern limit of Lord Baltimore's grant." 

As the map now stands, the boundary suggested by Penn 
was sixteen miles north of the existing State line between 
Pennsylvania and Maryland. But the committee did not 
approve the forty -third parallel as the proposed northern 
limit of Penn's grant. That question was, in fact, left 
indeterminate, with the understanding that it should be 
"settled by a more particular survey respecting the rights 
of the Duke of York west of the Delaware River." As it 
turned out, the forty-second parallel was adopted as the 
northern boundary of Penn's grant. 

After much investigation and a great deal of epistolary 
discussion chiefly remarkable for ignorance on all hands 
as to the actual geography of "the region west of the Dela- 
ware," King Charles II signed the patent on March 4, 1681. 

* ' This venerable document, ' ' says Hazard in his Annals, 
** which is still preserved and now hung up in the office of 

110 



THE PENNSYLVANIA CHARTER 

the Secretary of State at Harrisburg, is written on strong 
parchment in the old English handwriting, each line under- 
scored with red ink and the borders gorgeously decorated 
with heraldic devices. ' ' 

The next day Penn wrote a letter to Robert Turner ex- 
plaining the origin of the name of the new colony. He 
said he at first proposed to call it New Wales, to which 
objection was made in the Council. He then suggested 
"Sylvania." But the King prefixed the syllable ''Penn" 
— making it ' * Pennsylvania. ' ' 

William Penn was apprehensive that Fox and other 
Quakers would view this as a lack of humility on his part — 
a yearning after the fame of this world, or something of that 
sort — so he explained that the King prefixed the "Penn" 
in honor of the admiral's memory and his services to the 
country, and not in any degree as a compliment to himself. 
Having thus purged himself of any lurking suspicion that 
he had been guilty of vanity, Penn proceeded to draw up 
a form of government to be expressed in the charter. 

Between this charter and the system Penn had drawn up 
for West Jersey three years before fundamental differences 
appear. The governorship is vested in a single head, that 
head is Penn, and the office is made hereditary, saving only 
allegiance to the Crown, with "an annual rental of two 
beaver-skins delivered at Windsor Castle and one-fifth of 
all the gold and silver ore which shall be found within the 
limits of the grant aforesaid. ' ' 

The proprietary governor, with the assent of the free 
men of the colony, to make all laws not inconsistent with 

111 



WILLIAM PENN 

the laws of England; to appoint magistrates and judges; 
to grant pardons, except for murder and treason, and in 
these to grant reprieves until the pleasure of the King 
should be known. 

The exports of the colony to be sent into English ports 
only ; but a year after being landed in England they might 
be reshipped to any foreign port, subject to the duties im- 
posed upon British subjects. 

Penn and his heirs were bound to lev>^ no tax in the 
province except such as might be agreed to by the popular 
assembly, or by Act of ParUamcnt appointed. And the 
King was to levy no tax upon the inhabitants of the province 
without consent of the proprietary or assembly or hy Act 
of Parliament. 

The proprietary governor was made captain-general 
and authorized to levy, muster, and train all sorts of men ; 
to make war upon sea and land against barbarous nations, 
pirates, and robbers. 

The Bishop of London had a clause inserted — after fail- 
ing to secure establishment of the Church of I]ngland — 
requiring that, when twenty or more of the inhabitants 
might so request, an Episcopal clergyman should be per- 
mitted to reside in the colony. 

For the rest, the charter of Pennsylvania embodied the 
substantial elements and principles of representative gov- 
ernment foreshadowed in the ''concessions" of West Jer- 
sey. Penn's original draft was revised by Chief- Justice 
North and the Attorney-General, Sir William Jones. The 
only material changes they made in it were the provision 
for defense and the reservation of the right to * ' tax the in- 

112 



THE PENNSYLVANIA CHAKTEK 

habitants by Act of Parliament." In this latter clause the 
Pennsylvania charter differed from all others.* 

But there was a reason for this. An explanation of it 
may be found in the papers of Algernon Sidney. lie had 
seen Penn's first draft. He knew that it did not contain 
either the clause providing for defense or the reservation 
of the right to tax by Act of Parliament. Those were in- 
serted by Chief -Justice North (Lord Guildford) and Sir 
William Jones, the Attorney-General. In this Sidney — 
Puritan and republican though he was — sustained the law 
olScers. This colony, he said, differed from all others. It 
was a Quaker colony. Occasion for self-defense against 
aggression might arise — must, in fact, arise. The Quakers 
would not defend themselves. Nor would an assembly hav- 
ing a Quaker majority vote supplies for defense by others. 
Therefore, in time of war the Quaker colony must either be 
defended by the mother country or left to its fate, which, 
of course, would be absurd. 

Now, as the Quakers would not defend themselves or 
pay for defense by others, it was perfectly just for the 
mother country to reserve the right to make them pay the 
cost whenever it became necessary to defend them. The only 
way by which this could be done was through Act of Par- 
liament, enforced by English troops, if necessary. In other 
words, the blind adherence of the Quakers to the strangest 

* When Dr. Franklin went to London as colonial agent just before 
the Revolution, Lord Shelburne jocosely told him that Pennsylvania had 
not the same grievance that New England and other colonies alleged, be- 
cause the right of Parliament to tax Pennsylvania was reserved expressly 
in the charter. Franklin's retort was that "the relations between Eng- 
land and her American colonies had got beyond the scope of a Quaker 
meeting ! " 

y 113 



WILLIAM PENN 

of all Fox's whims made it justifiable to withhold from 
them the greatest right that Englishmen ever claimed — the 
right of "no taxation without representation." It is, at 
this distance and in the light of our time, impossible to 
comprehend how a man of Penn's general wisdom and 
breadth of view could be held in such mental subjec- 
tion by the vagaries of George Fox. He must have 
known — a half-witted man not crazed by sectarian fanat- 
icism or hypnotized by a canting zealot could not have 
helped knowing — that a prosperous and rich colony could 
not be created on a basis of universal peace in an era of 
universal rapine. Therefore, he must have realized the 
need of provision for defense. But he seems to have been 
so abjectly enslaved by Fox that he preferred to surrender 
the g'reatest of rights rather than assert the commonest prin- 
ciple of manhood. This is the only real blot upon Penn's 
character as a statesman. It was a tremendous price to pay 
for nothing better than a heritage of ridicule and a birth- 
right of contempt. The sequel proved that the law officers 
of the Crown were wise. 

When the charter was signed there were about a thou- 
sand — some authorities say twelve hundred — white inhab- 
itants already in the territory granted to Penn. They were 
mostly Swedes, together with some Finlanders — the pioneers 
of 1632 — and a few Dutch traders who had chosen to stay 
on the Delaware after the English conquered New Amster- 
dam and called it New York. To these Penn, under date 
of April 8, 1681, addressed the following: 

My Friends: I wish you all happiness here and here- 
after. These are to let you know that it hath pleased God, 

114 




THE SWEDES' CHUKCH AND SVEN SENER'S HOUSE. 
From Watsou's Anuals of Philadelphia. 




TREATY TREE AND FAIRMANS MANSION. 

From Watson's Annals of I'liiladcliiliia. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA CHARTER 

ill Ills Providence, to cast you within my lot and care. It 
is a business that, though I never undertook before, yet God 
hath given me an understanding of my duty and an honest 
mind to do it uprightly. I hope you will not be troubled^ 
at the change and the King's choice, for you are now fixed 
at the mercy of no governor that comes to make his fortune 
great; you shall he governed by laws of your own making, 
and live a free, and, if you will, a sober and industrious 
people. [The italics are Penn's.] 

I shall not usurp the rights of any, or oppress his person. 
God hath furnished me with a better resolution and hath 
given me His grace to keep it. ' In short, whatever sober 
and free men can reasonably desire for the security and 
improvement of their own happiness, I shall heartily com- 
ply with; and in five months resolve, if it please God, to 
see you. In the meantime, pray submit to the commands 
of my deputy, so far as they are consistent with the law, 
and pay him those dues (that formerly you paid to the 
Governor of New York) for my use and benefit; and so I 
wish God to direct you in the way of righteousness and 
therein prosper you and your children after you. 

I am your true friend, 

William Penn. 

London, 8th of the month called April, 1681. 

The deputy mentioned was William Markham, Penn's 
cousin. He at once embarked, carrying the foregoing let- 
ter, a copy of the King's proclamation, and specific orders 
to the Governor of New York and to Lord Baltimore re- 
quiring them to observe the terms of the royal grant and 
to adjust boundaries without delay. 

Markham arrived in New York June 21st, and at once 
obtained from the acting or lieutenant-governor of that 
colony an order for the transfer of all territory on the west 

115 



WILLIAM PENN 

bank of the lower Delaware hitherto under control of New 
York to the authority of William Penn. Markham went 
from New York to Upland, the most northerly settlement 
of the Swedes. There he met Lord Baltimore, and the 
question of boundaries was taken up. It was found by 
observation (made by Captain Markham, who understood 
the art of surveying) that Penn had made a geographical 
error of about seventeen miles in his location of a southern 
boundary. The fortieth parallel, which he had stipulated, 
ran north of the confluence of the Delaware and Schuyl- 
kill, which he had already selected as the site of his new 
city.* 

In his selection of this parallel for his southern boundary 
Penn had been guided by the representations of John Fen- 
wick mainly, and the error, as Captain Markham at once 
perceived, must derange his whole plan of settlement. The 
conference with Lord Baltimore was adjourned, Markham 
wrote to Penn, and the latter forthwith appealed to the 
Duke of York to use his influence for rectification. The 
duke then defined his part of the cession to mean practi- 
cally the present State of Delaware, and Lord Baltimore 
was advised that the boundary must be so adjusted as to 
make Penn's south line at least fifteen minutes of latitude 
below the confluence of the two rivers. The exact delimita- 
tion of these boundaries was not efi^ected until many years 
afterward. In fact, the question was not finally settled 
until the running of "Mason and Dixon's Line." Mean- 

* The fortieth parallel runs through the north part of Gerniantown, 
leaving the whole of modern Philadelphia south of Penns original bound- 
ary. 

116 



THE P E N N S Y L V xV N I A CHARTER 

time, it was a source of constant litigation between 
Lord Baltimore and Penn, it survived them and was waged 
by their descendants or assigns long after they departed. 
The details of these disputes can not be reproduced here. 
They are of no interest to the general public of to-day and, 
in extenso, would fill another volume as large as this. 

Markham, confident that Penn would succeed in recti- 
fying the boundary, proceeded to carry out his original in- 
structions. They were as follows: "(1) To call a council 
of nine, he (Markham) presiding. (2) That he does there 
read my letter to the inhabitants and the King's declara- 
tion of subjection; then take the inhabitants' acknowledg- 
ment of my authority and proprietary. (3) To settle 
bounds between me and my neighbors, to survey, set out, 
sell, or rent lands according to my instructions dated April 
8, 1681. (4) To erect courts, appoint sheriffs, magistrates, 
and other necessary officers. (5) To call to his aid any of 
the inhabitants of those provinces for the legal suppression 
of tumults." 

The conditions of acquiring land, appended to Mark- 
ham 's instructions, were as follows : 

Those who wish to buy shares in the province can have 
5,000 acres for £500, and to pay annually one shilling quit- 
rent for each 100 acres ; the quit-rent not to begin till 1684. 
Those who only rent are to pay one penny per acre, not 
to exceed 200 acres. Those who take over servants — that 
is, laborers — are to be allowed fifty acres per head and fifty 
acres to every servant when his time is expired. . . . 

The passage will come, for masters and mistresses, at 
most, £6 a head ; for servants £5 a head, and for children 
under seven years of age fifty shillings. 

117 



WILLIAM PENN 

From these rates it would appear that there was much 
less difference between cabin and steerage accommodations 
in the transatlantic passenger service of 1G81 than now. 

Penn concludes by exhorting all emigrants to ''under- 
stand that they must look for a winter before a summer 
comes; they must be willing to be two or three years with- 
out some of the conveniences they enjoy at home. ' ' But he 
considers it his duty also to inform them that "America is 
another thing now than it was at the first planting of New 
England and Virginia." 

The circumstances and conditions of I'enn s grant were 
soon noised abt)ut the three kingdoms by the means of ad- 
vertisement usual in that day. His prospectus embodying 
the propositions above set forth was read at Quaker meet- 
ings and explained orally at fairs and market-places by 
Penn's agents. The first results were two ship-loads of 
emigrants, nearly all Quakers, who sailed in September of 
1681. The total number was about a hundred families, or, 
say, 350 to 400 souls. 

In one of the ships — the John and Sarah, of London — 
sailed three commissioners appointed and instructed by 
Penn to 

Locate and lay out a great town on the Pennsylvania 
bank of the Delaware, . . . where it is most navigable, and 
the land high, dry and healthy; that is, where most ships 
may best ride, of deepest draft of water, and if possible 
to load or unload at the bank or key-side, without boating 
or lighterage. 

Such a place being found, lay out ten thousand acres 
contiguous to it in the best manner you can, as the bounds 
and extent of the liberties of the said town. 

118 



THE PENNSYLVANIA CHARTER 

Every share of 5,000 acres [of farming landj shall have 
one hundred acres of land out of the ten thousand [in 
town and liberties). 

Pitch upon the very middle of the plot, where the town 
or line of houses is to be laid or run, facing the harbor and 
great river, for the situation of my house, and let it be, 
not the tenth part of the town as the conditions say, viz. : 
that out of every himdred thousand acres shall be reserved 
to me ten [thousand], but I shall be content with less than 
a thirtieth part, to wit : Three Hundred Acres, whereas sev- 
eral will have two [hundred] by purchasing two shares; 
that is, ten thousand acres, and it may be fitting for me 
to exceed a little. . . . 

Let every house be placed, if the person pleases, in the 
middle of its plot as to the breadthway of it, so that there 
may be ground on each side for gardens or orchards or 
fields, that it may be a green country town which will never 
be burnt and always wholesome ! . . . 

Be sure to keep the conditions hereunto affixed, and see 
that no vice or evil conversation go uncomplained of or un- 
punished in any, that God be not provoked to wrath against 
the country. 

These instructions were signed ''William Penn, 30th of 
September, 1681"; and were directed to "Nathaniel Allen, 
John Bezar, and William Crispin, Commissioners to ar- 
range for a settlement, lay out a town, and treat with the 
Indians." 

On this last-mentioned point Penn emphatically in- 
structed his commissioners to "be tender of offending the 
Indians and hearken by honest spies if you can hear that 
anybody inveigles them not to sell or to stand out and raise 
the value upon you. . . . Let my letter and conditions with 

119 



WILLIAM PENN 

purchasers about just dealing with them be read in their 
own tongue. ... Be grave ; they love not to be smiled on ! " 

The ship bearing the commissioners arrived late in 
November. They found that, so far as concerned selection 
of a site for the "great town," they had been anticipated 
by Markham. Soon after his arrival, and after his confer- 
ence with Lord Baltimore at Upland (Chester), the ener- 
getic deputy had proceeded up the Delaware to reconnoiter. 
In August — before the date of Penn 's instructions to Allen, 
Bezar, and Crispin — Markham had selected that part of the 
Philadelphia river-front now bounded by the foot of Pine 
Street on the south and the foot of Race Street on the 
north as the most available site for a town afforded by the 
west bank of the Delaware anywhere near its confluence with 
the Schuylkill. He had also begun to clear land and had 
built several small houses, including a log tavern or inn, 
and a number of "caves" had been excavated in the bluff 
bank of the river for temporary shelter. Thus, whatever 
the commissioners may have intended to do, it turned out 
that the man who actually selected the site and determined 
the practical foundation of Philadelphia was William 
Markham. 

At this point we may briefly survey the system of gov- 
ernment embodied in Penn's charter: 

1. It created a proprietary executive, hereditary in his 
family, in feoffment. This was feudal. 

2. It reserved to the proprietary executive the power to 
appoint judicial officers. This was, in itself, monarchical, 
but limited by the power of the people to impeach; and 
it survives in the Federal Constitution of to-day. 

120 




tJ -r, 



THE PENNSYLVANIA CHARTER 

3. It created a popular assembly chosen by unqualified 
or universal suffrage. This was pure democracy. 

4. It created a system of land tenure involving the prin- 
ciple of perpetual ground-rent, inalienable and incommu- 
table except by grace of the hereditary proprietor. This 
was aristocratic. It denied the principle of freehold in the 
land by fee simple, the dearest right of freemen. 

5. It conceded the right of Parliament to tax the colony. 
This was a surrender at the outset of a principle that lies at 
the bottom of self-government — a principle in vindication 
of which the American Revolution was inaugurated less 
than a century afterward in Penn's own Philadelphia. 

6. It asserted absolute freedom of conscience and tol- 
erated all religions alike before the law, and denied in toto 
the doctrine of church establishment. This was perfect 
Christianity pure and simple. 

7. It recognized the original title of the Indians to the 
land, and required that it be purchased from them by what 
Penn himself called "fair and open dealing." This was 
just and humane, though subject to qualification by method. 

8. It not only made no provision for self-defense against 
aggression, but by implication seemed to flout the necessity 
of defense. This was absurd. It was, in fact, the only 
distinctively and essentially Quaker element of the whole 
scheme. But it proved the chief cause of all the troubles 
subsequently encountered by the proprietary government, 
and, ultimately, the rock on which that government was 
wrecked. 

However, in estimating the value of Penn's organic sys- 
tem — or the "Great Law," as it was called — it must be 

121 



WILLIAM PENN 

viewed as a whole. Incongruoiis as it may have been in 
parts, the sequel proved that the right it embodied was 
strong enough to overthrow its fallacies ; so that, in the long 
run, only the right survived. 

The feudal proprietary, the denial of fee simple in land 
tenure, and the Quaker non-combatantism all fell to the 
ground when the exigency of self-preservation brought the 
forces of popular sovereignty in hostile contact with them. 

Penn, though a believer in freedom of conscience, was 
never a republican or a democrat as Sidney, for example; 
nor a liberal in politics, as Cromwell, Ireton, and Hampden. 
Though he believed in popular representation, and pro- 
vided for it with sagacity beyond the lights of his time, he 
yet wished to reserve a power and a prerogative beyond the 
people's reach. 

For example, his land system, if carried out on its origi- 
nal lines, could not have resulted in anything but a landed 
gentry. He proposed a town and a province. Any pur- 
chaser of 5,000 acres in the province was entitled to 100 
acres in the town ; of 10,000 acres in the province to 200 
acres in the town. The province was practically without 
limit in acreage, but the town was limited to 100 shares of 
100 acres each. Had this scheme been carried out to the 
letter as Penn framed it and as he explains it in his instruc- 
tions to Allen, Bezar, and Crispin, the result must have 
been the elevation of one hundred families or less to the 
status of a landholding aristocracy separate and distinct 
from the mass of the people in privileges, which could 
not fail to produce distinction of caste in fact if not 
in name. 

122 



THE PENNSYLVANIA CHAIITER 

But in estimating Penn's personal relation to these evi- 
dent incongruities and even direct contradictions, we must 
bear in mind the peculiar conditions under which he had to 
operate and the capricious influences upon which he had to 
rely in acquiring his grant at all. 

No competent historian has ever accused Charles II of 
liberal tendencies. The best that can be said of him is that 
he was a good-natured voluptuary, who preferred kindness 
to cruelty when it would serve his purpose to be liind. No 
one has suspected James II of even a covert desire to pro- 
mote the cause of human freedom. The best that can be 
said of him is that his personal likes were strong, and that 
he could be good to the son for the sake of the dead father 
who had served him so well. 

Yet it was upon these two men that Penn must rely 
wholly for success. He must draw up a charter that the 
Duke of York (James II) would indorse and that the King 
would sign. How far or to what extent these conditions 
tied his hands there is no means of knowing. But it is safe 
to assume that all the liberalism in the charter was Penn's, 
and all else the King's — save and except, of course, the dis- 
tinctively Quaker clause, which may be considered the ex- 
pression of Penn's strange helplessness under the spell in 
which George Fox held him. 

On the whole, it must be remembered that Penn's char- 
ter was a product of the seventeenth century, and of its 
reactionary period at that. From that point of view it was 
a good deal better than was reasonably to have been ex- 
pected. 

His own views are doubtless best set forth in the third 
123 



WILLIAM PENN 

clause of the preface or preamble to the Constitution — or 
the "Twenty-four Articles": 

' ' Thirdly : I know what is said by the several admirers 
of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, which are the 
rule of one, of a few, and of many ; and are the three com- 
mon ideas of government when men discourse on that sub- 
ject. But I choose to solve the controversy with this small 
distinction, and it belongs to all three. Any government is 
free to the people under it, whatever be the frame, where 
the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws. . . . 
But, lastly, when all is said, there is hardly one frame of 
government so ill-designed by its founders that it in good 
hands would not do well enough !" 

From this it would appear that Penn believed good 
government lay quite as much in the character of adminis- 
tration as in the quality of law itself — a view common to 
optimists in later and more enlightened times than the sev- 
enteenth century. 

William Penn was by no means destitute of detractors 
in the country of his adoption. Legion as was the name of 
his enemies in England, he still had room left for a few in 
America. Perhaps what are known as the Byrd Manu- 
scripts in the Virginia Historical Society have been seen 
by some who may read this book. If so, they may have 
noticed the following, written by William Byrd, deputy- 
governor of Virginia and president of the King's Council 
thereof from 1704 to 1744. This manuscript forms part 
of a succinct description of all the colonies as they stood 
at that period. Governor Byrd wrote this part of his 
Manuscripts about the year 1734, when he was sixty 

124 



THE PENNSYLVANIA CHAKTEll 

years old. No doubt thr ;iiiiaiory legend lie })erpetuatcs 
was part of the standard Church-of-England gossip in his 
time, and he probably believed it to be true. The general 
character of his writings is truthful, though they abound 
with evidences of personal or sectarian prejudice similar 
to this one. He says : 

The Proprietors of West Jersey, finding more Trouble 
than Profit in their new Dominions, made over their Right 
to several other Persons, who obtained a fresh Grant from 
his Royal Highness, dated March the 14th 1682. 

Several of the Grantees, being Quakers and Anabaptists, 
faild not to encourage many of their own Perswasion to 
remove to this Peaceful Region. Amongst them were a 
Swarm of Scots Quakers, who were not tolerated to exercise 
the Gifts of the Spirit in their own Country. 

Besides the hopes of being Safe from Persecution in this 
Retreat, the New Proprietors inveigled many over by this 
tempting Account of the Country : that it was a Place free 
from those 3 great Scourges of Mankind, Priests, Lawyers 
and Physicians. Nor did they tell a Word of a Lye, for 
the People were yet too poor to maintain these Learned 
Gentlemen, who, every where, love to be paid well for what 
they do; and, like the Jews, cant breathe in a Climate 
where nothing is to be got. 

The Jerseys continued under the Government of these 
Proprietors till the year 1702 when they made a formal 
Surrender of the Dominion to the Queen, reserving how- 
ever the Property of the Soil to themselves. 

So soon as the bounds of West Jersey came to be dis- 
tinctly laid off, it appeared that there was still a Narrow 
Slipe of Land, lying betwixt that Colony and Maryland. 
Of this, William Penn, a man of much Worldly Wisdom 
and some Eminence among the Quakers, got early Notice, 

125 



WILLIAM PENN 

and, by the Credit he had with the Duke of York, obtained 
a Patent for it, Dated March the 4th 1680. 

It was a little Surprising to some People how a Quaker 
should be so much in the good Graces of a Popish Prince; 
tho, after all, it may be pretty well Accounted for. This 
Ingenious Person had not been bred a Quaker: but in his 
Earlier days had been a Man of Pleasure about the Town. 
He had a beautiful form and very taking Address, which 
made him Successful wnth the Ladies, and particularly with 
a Mistress of the Duke of Monmouth. By this Gentle- 
woman he had a Daughter, who had Beauty enough to raise 
her to be a Dutchess, and continued to be a Toast full 30 
Years. 

But this Amour had like to have brought our Fine Gen- 
tleman in Danger of a Duell, had he not discreetly sheltered 
himself under this peaceable Perswasion. Besides, his 
Father having been a Flag-Officer in the Navy, while the 
Duke of York was Lord High Admiral, might recommend 
the Son to his Favor. This piece of Secret History I 
thought proper to mention, to wipe off the Suspicion of his 
having been Popishly inclind. 

This Gentleman's first Grant confind Him within pretty 
Narrow Bounds, giving him only that Portion of Land which 
contains Buckingham, Philadelphia and Chester Counties. 
But to get these Bounds a little extended. He pusht His In- 
terest still further with His Royal Highness, and obtaind a 
fresh Grant of the three Lower Counties, called New-Castle, 
Kent and Sussex, which still remaind within the New York 
Patent, and had been luckily left out of the Grant of New 
Jersey. 

The Six Counties being thus incorporated, the Propri- 
etor dignifyd the whole with the Name of Pensilvania. 

The Quakers flockt over to this Country in Shoals, being 
averse to go to Heaven the same way with the Bishops. 
Amongst them were not a few of good Substance, who went 

126 



THE PENNSYLVANIA CHARTER 

Vigorously upon every kind of Improvement; and thus 
much I may truly say in their Praise, that by Diligence and 
Frugality, For which this Harmless Sect is remarkable, 
and by haveing no Vices but such as are Private, they have 
in a few Years made Pensilvania a very fine Country. 

The truth is, they have observed exact Justice with all 
the Natives that border upon them; they have purchased 
all their Lands from the Indians : and tho they paid but a 
Trifle for them, it has procured them the Credit of being 
more righteous than their Neighbors. They have likewise 
had the Prudence to treat them kindly upon all occasions, 
which has savd them from many Wars and Massacres, 
wherein the other Colonies have been indiscreetly involved. 
The truth of it is, a People whose Principles forbid them 
to draw the Carnal Sword, were in the Right to give no 
Provocation. 

Of course, no one now would believe the slander which 
Governor Byrd in 1734 visits upon the memory of William 
Penn, dead then sixteen years. But the Virginia colonial 
statesman evidently believed it. He belonged to that class 
of the Lord's zealous servants whom we have in foregoing 
pages described as the Church of England in the seventeenth 
century. The spirit of persecution in the colonies was 
probably as willing as in Old England itself. But the flesh 
was weaker. Thus Governor Byrd, being by local condi- 
tions denied the proud privilege of persecution enjoyed by 
Mayor Starling and Recorder Howell, took his sectarian 
revenge by bequeathing to future generations a historical 
libel. Of this document we can hardly say "interesting if 
true." A more appropriate description would be "some- 
what interesting, though not true. ' ' 

127 



CHAPTER VI 

1681-1G84 

PENN'S FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 



10 



CHAPTER VI 

1G81-1684 
PENN's first year in PENNSYLVANIA 

Penn's promise of April, 1681, to the people of his new 
province that he "would see them in five months " was not 
kept. Cirenmstanees beyond his control compelled him to 
break it by a year. According to promise, he should have 
arrived in the colony about the end of September, 1681. 
He actually landed at Chester the 27th of October, 1682. 

The causes of his detention in Eno-land need not occupy 
much space here. Chief amonf>' them was the boundary 
question raised by the discovery of an error in geography 
noted in the last chapter. This was not even tentatively 
adjusted until August, 1682, when the Duke of York deeded 
to him in feoffment the present State of Delaware. This 
alone would have held him, because without such modifica- 
tion of his original boundary his province would have been 
landlocked to a point several miles above the mouth of the 
Schuylkill. But there were other delays. He wished to 
take with him across the ocean at least a thousand settlers, 
and he also desired to exercise a personal choice as to the 
character and quality of these pioneers, rightfully holding 
that the time to fix the mental and moral status of a settle- 
ment is at the beginning. 

131 



WILLIAM PENN 

But the undertaking was not easy. The Quakers were 
an inquiring people. They wanted to make sure that their 
temporal as well as spiritual interests would be subserved 
by the vast change from the ancient civilization of Eng- 
land to the savage wilderness of America. While Penn en- 
couraged all "sober and industrious persons who wished to 
live free," he clearly had a first preference for Quakers, 
and there is abundant evidence that he meant so to arrange 
his scheme of emigration as to keep them in the majority. 
He held out the hand of welcome to Germans of the Palati- 
nate and Huguenots of France; but he wanted Quakers 
first, and enough of them to insure popular control. In 
other words, his was Quaker philanthropy, with incidental 
w-ell-doing toward the rest of the world. 

BiLsy as he must have been with these numerous and 
indispensable duties, Penn could still find time to take part 
in a church quarrel and write a tract. 

In 1680 two Quakers of consequence, John Wilkinson 
and John Story, rebelled against Fox's Code of Church 
Discipline, formulated in 1669. They contended that Fox 
started out in 1647 to preach a new gospel, which, accord- 
ing to his own declaration, God had revealed to him in a 
personal interview, that this gospel was based upon abso- 
lute freedom of individual conscience guided by Inward 
Light; that it denounced all kinds of church organization, 
condemned all sorts of sectarian administration, and flouted 
every code of ecclesiastical discipline. They then showed 
that, as soon as Fox had gathered about him a new sect, he 
saw fit to reduce it to subjection by a Code of Discipline, 
quite the same as other sects not professing the absolute 

132 



FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

autocracy of the Inward Light. All this was true. By 1681 
the Story-Wilkinson schism had become formidable enough 
to attract the attention of Fox himself. There was immi- 
nent danger of an internal "reformation" in the Quaker 
Church itself, almost as radical as Luther's revolt against 
Romanism. 

Li this extremity Fox appealed to Penn for help. Penn 
preached an admonitory sermon or two in Bristol and wrote 
a tract entitled as follows : A Brief Examination of Lib- 
erty Spiritual : Both with Respect to Persons in their Pri- 
vate Capacity and in their Church Society and Commun- 
ion! Penn prevailed. Story and Wilkinson were sup- 
pressed — whether by the text or by the title, or by both, 
of Penn's tract does not appear. But at any rate, they were 
crushed and Fox still reigned supreme. So far as the rec- 
ord shows, Penn was now free to proceed with the founding 
of Pennsylvania. It is not amiss to add that Story and 
Wilkinson subsequently cooperated with Penn in his great 
enterprise. 

Among Penn's undertakings during this period (1681- 
'82) was to organize, under a charter of his own, a 
company called the Free Society of Traders. This cor- 
poration was intended by its founder to accomplish by 
association of capital and enterprise such large and ex- 
pensive operations as might be beyond the power of indi- 
vidual means. It purchased 20,000 acres of land with the 
special inducement of freedom from quit-rent, but other- 
wise upon the common terms. It was also intended as a 
corporation to own and navigate ships in traffic between 
the colony and the mother country, but in this respect 

133 



WILLIAM PENN 

it enjoyed no special privileges or monopolies. It was short- 
lived, and its history is not of particular interest. Another 
association of English Quakers applied to Penn for con- 
cession of a monopoly in the Indian trade of the colony, 
offering £6,000 cash and a percentage on transactions for 
the privilege. This Penn refused to grant, saying that he 
''aimed only at equal justice and righteousness and to 
spreading of the truth; not at his own particular gain." 
Also that he "would keep undefiled and for equal benefit 
of all that which the Lord gave to him clean, and would 
give to none privilege or monopoly over another." 

As for himself, so far as we may judge from his expres- 
sions and his conduct alike, he did not consider his own 
proprietary as a monopoly, but rather as a trust reposed 
in him by the Almighty through the King, for the equal 
behoof and benefit of any and all who might follow his 
fortunes or aid him in developing the new domain. It is 
hardly necessary to add that this lofty sense of his own 
moral responsibility in the premises died with him and was 
buried in his grave. That sense and his total freedom from 
cupidity and avarice were among the things which his 
progeny did not inherit. 

Having done all he could to promote the interests of 
the colony in England, and having arranged for a large 
emigration the following year, Penn sailed from the Downs 
in the ship Welcome, of 300 tons, August 31, 1682. His 
last letter to his wife and children was a long one, almost 
wholly domestic in tenor. About the only passage of his- 
torical interest is an intimation concerning the state of his 
finances at the time : 

134 



FIKST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

Cast np thy income and see what it daily amounts to; 
by which thou mayest be sure to have it in thy sight and 
power to keep within compass. I beseech thee to live low 
and sparingly till my debts are paid. Then enlarge as thou 
seest it convenient. 

In this there was no affectation. Penn was on the verge 
of insolvency when he sailed for America. Plis estate in 
Ireland and other realty left to him by his father had been 
mortgaged to the last penny. The small estate and home 
at Worminghurst was the property of his wife, inherited 
from her father, Sir William Springett; and she had con- 
siderably encumbered it to aid her husband between 1677 
and 1682. It is related of her that she desired to accom- 
pany Penn in this his first voyage to the New World. But 
she was not in robust health, her youngest child was hardly 
two years old, and Penn quite sensibly decided that the 
comforts of Sussex would be better for a family so situ- 
ated than roughing it in Pennsylvania — at least for a year 
or two. It was understood, however, that they were to 
follow him as soon as he should be able to make a com- 
fortable home for them. 

It is evident from the tenor of numerous letters written 
by Penn and by others to him on the eve of sailing that he 
fully intended to reside permanently in the new colony. 
Further evidence is found in orders he gave for the pur- 
chase and shipment of many things for his own use, such as 
seeds, farming utensils, furniture, live stock for breeding 
purposes, ironwork for the building of mills, and last, but 
by no means least, "a complete sett of shipwrights tools 
and furnishings and shipsmiths utensils suitable and suflfi- 

1:15 



WILLIAM PENN 

cient for the employ of at least twenty-five capable men at 
ship-building. . . . Also, a full establishment for printing, 
including plentiful supply of paper and press-ink." 

Apparently he did not propose to be denied his favorite 
pastime of authorship. As for his forethought toward the 
art of shipbuilding, it was doubtless an inheritance from 
his seafaring father and grandfather. Moreover, it is of 
interest to know that William Penn was really the founder 
of the ship-building industry on the Delaware, for the first 
seagoing vessel launched at Philadelphia was built for him, 
and in a shipyard of which he was principal promoter and 
chief owner. 

A diary of the voyage of the Welcome kept by Thomas 
Pearson, of which some fragments were extant in Clark- 
son's day, describes Penn as a good sailor, and says that he 
knew the art of navigation as well as the master of the ship, 
explaining that it had been taught to him by his father 
before he went to Oxford. 

The voyage of the Welcome was considered a prosper- 
ous one for those days. She made the Capes of the Dela- 
ware the 22d of October, or fifty-two days from the Downs. 
Besides Penn the ship brought 116 passengers, all 
Quakers except three Huguenots. Though prosperous in 
point of time, the voyage was by no means free from mis- 
fortime. A fortnight after sailing smallpox broke out on 
board, and twenty-seven of the passengers died. The same 
diary from which we have quoted says that "the good and 
cheerful conversation of Governor Penn was most advan- 
tageous unto all the Company ; and he manifested singular 
care in contributing to the necessities of the many who were 

136 




I'ENN LANDING AT BLUE ANCHOR INN. 
From Watson's Auuals of Philadelphia. 




PENN LANDING AT CHESTER. 
From Watson's Annals of Philadelphia. 



FIKST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

sick of the smallpox on board. . . . Though never having 
had the disease himself and being therefore subject to its 
contagion, he attended the cots and hammocks of those pros- 
trated without fear, trusting all in the mercy of the Lord. ' ' 

On the 29th of October, 1682, he landed at Chester, and 
there summoned the officers and principal inhabitants of 
the lower Delaware settlements to meet him in council 
on November 2d at New Castle. Ten officials, including 
Deputy-Governor Markham, were present, and about a hun- 
dred and twenty citizens. At this council measures for 
confirming land titles were agreed upon, and until an assem- 
bly could be chosen to legislate for the colony imder the new 
charter and the deeds of feoffment, he directed that the laws 
of the colony of New York be continued in force. 

From New Castle he went up the river to Chester again, 
where the ship anchored, and Penn proceeded thence to the 
site of Philadelphia " in a six-oared barge. ' ' His first land- 
ing was at the spot cleared by Markham the year before. 
Here a log tavern had been built, which is known to his- 
tory as The Sign of the Blue Anchor. 

This, according to Robert Proud 's History of Pennsyl- 
vania, written a century and a quarter ago, was the first 
house built in Philadelphia,* though at the time of Penn's 

* This refers to the original city. A small settlement of Swedes, 
called " Wicacao " (now Southwark), was made some time before 1681. 
Elsewhere we have referred to Upland (Chester) as the " northernmost 
Swedish settlement on the Delaware." Wicacao was, of course, north 
of Upland village, but was considered a part of the settlement as a 
whole, and under its jurisdiction before Penn's grant was made or Phila- 
delphia founded. Swedish fishermen and hunters had also built cabins on 
the banks of the Schuylkill as far up as the falls of that river several 
years prior to the advent of Penn. 

137 



WILLIAM PENN 

arrival in November, 1682, nine other houses much like it 
were built and occupied to the northward of it. The 
Blue Anchor Tavern was built by a settler named John 
Guest. It stood near the present northwest corner of Front 
and Dock Streets, on a knoll about twenty feet above high 
tide, and a small creek forming a tidal cove or small harbor 
flowed into the river south of it. The river-front of to-day 
bears no resemblance to that of 1682. Then the bank ter- 
minated in an abrupt bluff east of the present line of Front 
Street. All east of that bluff has been reclaimed from the 
river by bulkheading and filling in. For that reason no 
description would be intelligible on the basis of modern 
landmarks. Besides, the small details and traditions of 
first settlement — even of so important a city as Philadel- 
phia — are more properly the subject of the gazetteer than 
of general history, and are not likely to be of interest to 
any but the local antiquary. 

Penn now passed a fortnight in visiting New York, and 
on his way thither examined the site for "Pennsbury 
Manor," which Captain Markham had bought from the 
Indians the preceding year, and on which a manor-house 
was built in 1682- '83. This estate was on the west bank of 
the Delaware, five miles above the present Bristol, Pa., 
nearly opposite the present Bordentown, N. J., and as origi- 
nally planned was to embrace about 7,000 acres. No trace 
of it now exists. 

All human greatness has its apogee and every great 
career has its climax. And this moment or this measure 
is regulated by the schoolbooks. The average schoolboy 
knows Washington best as the author of the Farewell Ad- 

138 




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FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

dress; Franklin best as flying his kite to catch the light- 
ning; and William Penn best under the "Treaty Elm" at 
Shackamaxon. The scene has been idealized by Benjamin 
West on canvas, and the picture is a national heirloom. 
Historical critics, such as Hazard, Watson, Clarkson, and 
Story, have picked West's picture to pieces until little is 
left of it but a study of anachronism. Such critics, how- 
ever, must not be heeded. They are men whose sense of 
historical exactness suppresses their emotions — if they 
have any. And West slights the tree ! If his picture had 
no other fault, that one alone ought to condemn it. 

Of this treaty, the most famous in history between the 
white man and the red man, no formal records exist. Even 
the date — or dates — of Penn's meeting — or meetings — with 
the Indian chiefs are not exactly known. The nearest 
approach to official record is found in a speech of Governor 
Gordon, of Pennsylvania, to Indians of the same tribes in 
the same place forty-five years afterward (May, 1728). 
From this speech and from fragments of correspondence 
contemporaneous with Penn's treaty, including a letter of 
his own to the Free Society of Traders written soon after 
the event, Messrs. Peter Duponceau and Francis Fisher 
many years ago prepared for the Historical Society of 
Pennsylvania an ingenious and voluminous paper * which 
has been generally accepted as the history of the transac- 
tion. The details are of course too prolix for these pages. 
It may, however, be remarked that a current impression 
that the main object of this treaty was to negotiate for the 
purchase of certain lands is erroneous. No question of 
* Memoirs : Historical Soc. of Pa., vol. iii, part ii, p. 112 et seq. 

139 



WILLIAM PENN 

that kind was brought up, and no particular lands were 
bargained for. The object of the treaty was general: to 
agree upon a system of relations, to arrive at what diplo- 
matists call a modus vivendi, and to provide methods of 
adjusting peaceably any disputes that might occur.* 

A primary condition of all colonial privileges under 
royal favor in those days was that the King conveyed only 
the sovereignty in loco, subject to the Crown at large; and 
that the grantees in all cases must "extinguish the Indian 
title" to the lands granted. The pioneers of the various 
colonies proceeded under this requirement according to 
their respective characteristics. For examj^le, the fighting 
Puritans who colonized New England adopted the Crom- 
wellian method in which they had been bred and trained. 
They ''extinguished the Indian title" by the simple, sure, 
and irreversible expedient of extinguishing the Indian. 

At the other extreme the long-suffering and peaceful 
Quakers who settled West Jersey and Pennsylvania took 
a less drastic though by no means less effectual course of 
procedure: they availed themselves of the Indian's inex- 
perience in the real-estate business. They accomplished by 
means of a few economical looking-glasses and cheap beads 

♦ But if there is no exact record of the treaty itself, the spot where it 
was made is known. It was on the bank of the Delaware near the pres- 
ent foot of Shackamaxon Street. The spot is signalized and the event 
commemorated by a neat little riverside park in the midst of busy work- 
shops and almost under the shadow of Cramp's great shipyard. The old 
Elm Tree was blown down in March, 1810, taking with it a history rivaled 
only by the Charter Oak of Connecticut. In its place is now a lofty flag- 
staff, made and presented to the Park Association by a man born and 
reared within a stone's throw of the historic spot, the greatest of American 
ship-builders, Charles H. Cramp. 

140 



FIE ST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

what lilt' J'uritaiis wi-oitylit out with powder and bad. 
When the Quakers had to determine the boundaries of their 
peaceful transactions in aboriginal real estate they resorted 
to pedestrianisni — of which more in detail later on. 

It requires no exuberant imagination to depict before 
the mind's eye, on the one hand, the redoubtable Captain 
Myles Standish, with resolution graven upon his grim 
visage, striding, armed cap-a-pie, in the direction of Wessa- 
gussett ; and, on the other hand, the pacific Penn, his placid 
features all aglow with ''a smile that was childlike and 
bland," and his hands full of economical presents, setting 
out for Shackamaxon. 

Here w^e have, unquestionably, the two extremes of 
early Indian policy personified. In the long run the fate of 
the Indian w^as the same. As a race or as a people in per- 
petuity it made little difference to the Indian whether he 
succumbed to Puritan bullets or Quaker blandishments; he 
succumbed and his race perished from the earth just the 
same. As already intimated, Penn's "Great Treaty" has 
been richly idealized. For more than two centuries it has 
been the pet theme of emotional writers on the subject of 
the American Indian. It is therefore a thankless task at 
this late date to sift out the real facts. In dealing wnth the 
Indians during the colonial period Penn's policy found but 
one disciple, and that one came half a century after him. 
It was Sir William Johnson. 

All other colonists in contact with the Indians regarded 
them as unclean beinus, or noisome vermin, to be disposed 
of in the shortest time and by the readiest expedients. 
These expedients generally proved to be fraud or force, or 

141 



WILLIAM PENN 

both, the ratio or proportion of the one to the otlier varying 
with the characteristics of the white people or the situa- 
tion and resources of the Indians. 

Penn, however, had at least one advantage enjoyed by 
no other white man having to deal with Indians on a large 
scale. He was to all intents and purposes on virgin soil. 
The Indians with whom he came in contact had been nei- 
ther corrupted by the vices nor warned by the rapacity of 
the white race. They had seen only the handful of harm- 
less Swedish farmers or fishermen, with now and then a 
jolly Dutch trader. They had yet to learn the meaning of 
the words "white man's land hunger." The French in 
Canada had not begun to use the Indian as a factor in the 
contest for empire. 

Therefore Penn was not called upon to soften preju- 
dices, allay hatred or remove distrust, which was the lot 
of all Indian negotiators who came after him. What Penn 
did with Tamenend in 1682, and what he might have done 
had he tried to deal with Captain Pipe in 1782 — both head 
chiefs of the same tribe, the Delawares — would doubtless 
make contrary stories. 

Tamenend and Captain Pipe were a century apart. 
The difference between their respective ideas and policies 
represented the effect of a hundred years of acquaintance 
with white men. The Delawares of Tamenend 's time lived 
in eastern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey. The 
Delawares of Captain Pipe's time lived in central and 
northern Ohio. That geographical description represents 
the extent to which they "had been driven from their an- 
cestral lands" — a favorite phrase with sentimental writers. 

142 



FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

To Jill praetical inleiiis and purposes they had been 
"driven" as fast and as far as other tribes who never 
enjoyed the advantages of the Quaker peace policy. 

Captain Pipe was a son of the " Half-king," so friendly 
to Washington at the beginning of the old French War 
(1754). And the Half-king was a descendant of the 
Sachem Tamenend, who made the great treaty with Penn 
at Shackamaxon. Yet Captain Pipe burned Colonel William 
Crawford and his son at the stake in 1782, on the banks of 
the Sandusky, just a century after his great-grandfather 
made a treaty of perpetual peace with William Penn on 
the banks of the Delaware. This would seem to argue that 
Indian friendship, like other friendships, is an affair of con- 
ditions, regulated by time and place and existing facts. As 
the sequel proved, Penn 's famous ' ' amity with the Indians ' ' 
did not last much beyond his own lifetime. 

Calling attention to variations of time, place, and cir- 
cumstance does not diminish the credit that is due to Penn. 
It does, however, break the force of contrasts which so 
many enthusiastic writers have drawn between his policy 
and that of those who came later — contrasts which unduly 
exalt him and unjustly abase them. 

In 1682 the Indian knew neither the value of his land 
nor the strength of those who were to seek it. He saw a 
few white men coming in a little ship, and they came then 
not as conquerors, but as beggars. He had no means of 
knowing — and could not have comprehended had he been 
told — what conquering hosts lay behind this feeble van- 
guard. 

In the main it must be said, or confessed, that the pol- 
143 



WILLIAM PENN 

icy of the Anglo-8axou race on this continent toward the 
aborigines has been patterned after that begun by Captain 
Myles Standish rather than that attempted by William 
Penn. Whether for right or for wrong, whether for better 
or for worse, the Indian policy of the American people for 
nearly three centuries — like most other policies of the 
American people — has taken its model from the fighting 
Puritans, leaving the policy of the non-combatant Quakers 
to await the approving effulgence of the millennium. 
Still the Quakers got the Indians' land, and got it cheap.* 
We have observed that in the primary treaty under the 
Old Elm Tree at Shackamaxon there was no specific nego- 
tiation for the cession of land, only a general agreement as 

* Some idea as to the average Quaker system of dealing in aboriginal 
real estate under the beneficent auspices of the "peace policy" may be 
formed from the purchase of the Salem tract by John Fenwick (" Old 
Quaker John " of unsavory legend) in 1678. The tract fronted twenty- 
four miles on the Delaware and extended back far enough to embrr.ce an 
area of over eight hundred square miles. The price paid, as recorded in 
Smith's History of New Jersey, was as follows : " The natives received 
for it, 30 match-coats, 20 guns, 30 kettles, 1 great kettle, 30 pair of hose, 
20 fathoms of duffels, 30 petticoats, 30 narrow hoes, 30 bars of lead, 15 
small barrels of powder, 70 knives, 30 Indian axes, 70 combs, 60 pair of 
tobacco tongs, 60 pair of scissors, 60 tinshaw looking-glasses, 120 awl- 
blades, 120 fish-hooks, 2 grasps of red paint, 120 needles, 60 tobacco 
boxes, 120 pipes, 200 bells, 100 Jew's-harps and 6 ankers of rum." (An 
" anker" was 8^ gallons.) Lest this might be considered an extreme or 
exceptional case of philanthropy, it may be added that the total cost of all 
land purchases made from the Indians during Penn's lifetime, or after- 
ward, within the limits of his proprietary domain, was £4,800, as shown 
by the records extant. There are, however, many Indian deeds in which 
the consideration is not stated. These were presents. The total area of 
Indian land, bought or received as gifts, was about 8,000 to 8,500 square 
miles. The average cost, therefore, would be about eleven shillings ster- 
ling (say $2.75) to the square mile, or about forty-three one hundredths of 
a cent per acre ! 

144 



FIKST YE All IN PENNSYLVANIA 

to mode of purchase and survey. The next mention we find 
of dealing with the Indians is under dates of Jime 23, 
1683, and July 14 following, when deeds were recorded for 
transfer of a tract above Philadelphia, bounded by Nesham- 
iny Creek on the south, and another south and west from 
the town, between the Schuylkill and Chester Creek. The 
Neshaminy tract was "surveyed" by the primitive expedi- 
ent of a walking-match against time. The agreement was 
that the tract should extend beyond the mouth of the 
Neshaminy (northward) "as far as a man could walk and 
back in three days!" That is, it meant a day and a half 
each way. John Watson * says : 

Governor Penn, with several Friends and a party 
of Indians, began in the month of November at the 
mouth of the Neshaminy and walked up the Dela- 
ware. In a day and a half they arrived at a point 
about thirty miles distant at the mouth of a creek which they 
called "Baker's" [from the name of the man who first 
reached it]. Here they marked a spruce-tree; and Gov- 
ernor Penn decided that this was as much land as would be 
immediately wanted for settlement, and walked no farther. 
They walked at leisure, the Indians sitting down sometimes 
to smoke their pipes and the white men to eat biscuit and 
cheese and drink a bottle of wine. A line was afterward 
run from the spruce-tree to Neshaminy and marked, the 
remainder was left to be walked out when wanted for set- 
tlement.! 

Pending these negotiations with the Indians the first 
assembly was elected and the colonial government perma- 

* Hazard's Kegister, vol. vi. 

t This transaction, though somewhat crude in system, seems to have 
been fair enough, as the Indiana themselves took part in the peripatetic 

11 145 



WILLIAM PENN 

nently inaugurated. This assembly met at Chester De- 
cember 4, 1682. Among the parliamentary rules they 
adopted was one providing that "none shall speak before 
the question is put — and but once after, and none shall fall 
from the matter to the person ; and superfluous and tedious 
speeches may be stopped by the speaker. ' ' 

This assembly sat only four days. Its work, aside from 
the adoption of its own rules, was the passage of "The Great 
Law" in sixty-nine sections, without material amendment, 
just as it had been drawn up in England and brought over 
by Penn. This may be considered the beginning of what is 
now commonly termed "Bossism" in Pennsylvania legis- 
lation, an early example from which two centuries have 
developed no deviation worthy of comment. In fact, the 
bossism instituted by Penn in the first popular or repre- 
sentative assembly of Pennsylvania is the sole relic of his 
regime that survives with full vigor and effect. 

Four days after the assembly adjourned Penn set out 
for West River, Maryland, where a meeting was arranged 
with Lord Baltimore to adjust the boundary question. 
There was much debate resulting in no conclusion other 
than an agreement to refer the whole issue back to the 
King and his Council, Lord Baltimore refusing to receive 
the King's letter or the Duke of York's deeds of feoffment 
as amendments to his patent. 

" survey." But a later real-estate operation on the same plan was differ- 
ent. In 1733, when the proprietary was under the management of Thomas 
Penn, more land was needed and the " walkino; survey " again resorted to. 
Thomas Penn hired a sprinter named Edward Marshall, who walked eighty- 
six miles in a day and a half ! Tlie Indians resented this, and soon after 
began a system of petty warfare on the border settlements. 

146 



FIRST YEAR TN PENNSYLVANIA 

Penu then returnt'd to Chester, where he passed the I'est 
of the winter — 1682- '83. This, according to contemporary 
accounts, was a very hard season, navigation in the Deki- 
ware being blocked by ice until April, and the snow so deep 
on land that improvements were brought to a standstill. 

Upon the opening of spring operations were resumed 
with great energy. More than a hundred houses were built 
in Philadelphia during the summer of 1683, and Penn had 
a small ship * built for the account of the Free Society of 
Traders. She w^as called the Amity. This was the begin- 
ning of ship-building in Philadelphia, an art in which the 
city has excelled from that day to this. It is interesting to 
note that though the Amity's hull and spars were new and 
built of American timber, her ironwork, standing rigging, 
and much of the running rigging were taken from an old 
brig of the same name which had brought over a load of 
emigrants the previous fall, and was then condemned and 
broken up at Chester, having nearly foundered on the voy- 
age. In this, at least, all other colonial records were broken. 
No seagoing vessel was built in Massachusetts until four- 
teen years after the landing of the Pilgrims. But Penn 
built a ship in Philadelphia wnthin three years from the 
signing of his charter. 

During the summer of 1683 Penn devoted all his spare 
time to the completion of his manor-house at Pennsbury — 

* According to tradition, this pioneer of sliip-buildinj^ on the Delaware 
was built at the northeast corner of High Street (now Market Street) and 
the river-bank. At that time the bank at that point was at the foot of the 
steep incline from Front Street to the present Delaware Avenue ; so that 
the stocks on which the Amity was built must have occupied part of the 
ground on wliicli the Ridgway Hotel now stands. 

147 



WILLIAM PENN 

begun, as already intimated, by Deputy-Governor Mark- 
ham in the spring of 1682. It is a curious fact that Will- 
iam Penn never built or even planned a mansion for him- 
self in Philadelphia. The only dwelling ever erected there 
for his particular use and ownership was a small house, 
known to history as Laetitia Cottage.* Had circumstances 
permitted him to carry out his original design of perma- 
nent residence in the colony he would doubtless have built 
an elegant and imposing town mansion. But the care, 
pains, and expense he lavished on Pennsbury Manor indi- 
cate that he intended it to be his principal place of abode 
and the hereditary seat of his baronial estate. 

In the fall of 1683 Penn made an exploration of his 
domains. The details of his journey are meager. In a 
letter to the Free Society of Traders, wa-itten soon after his 
return to Philadelphia, he gives an elaborate description 
of the territory, soil, products, and climate. He also most 
interestingly describes the Indians, but he has left no itin- 
erary of his movements. John Watson says that he ' ' pene- 
trated the wilderness to the bank of the Susquehanna and 
as far to the south as Conestoga. He met many Indians, 
and freely partook of their simple fare. Sometimes he 
lodged in their huts of bark, but more often in his own tent. 
The Indian huts were not cleanly, and the governor was 
unable to endure either the odors or the small inhabitants 
of the Indian abodes. Nevertheless he made great acquaint- 
ance, and a retinue of them was always at his heels bring- 
ing profusion of game, fowl, fish, and the wild fruits and 

• Now removed from its original site and reerected, brick for brick, 
in Fairmount Park, fronting Girard Avenue, just west of the Schuylkill. 

148 




PENN'S lloMi:, 'I' 111-: L.iyiM'IMA I! (II 



Removed from its original site ami imw staiidinj; in Fairmoinit Park, 
Philacklpliia. 



FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

berries. He made diligent study of their language, both 
by words and by signs, and at the journey's end could 
make himself well understood as to the needful things of 
life without an interpreter, though he had a most compe- 
tent one — one Svenson, a Swede, born at Upland." 

Penu's description of the country, and particularly of 
the Indians, is the most interesting contribution he ever 
made to history in the general sense. It is the only one of 
his voluminous writings that may be described as wholly 
free from a species of cant which his earlier theological 
career seemed to have made almost second nature with him. 
It is, indeed, pure generalization. But that was to be ex- 
pected from a man whose mind, no matter how fertile by 
nature, had been sterilized by nearly twenty years of sev- 
enteenth-century sectarian theology. To a mind so sancti- 
fied and to a conception so spiritualized, there could be no 
charm in nature, no impress of the incidents of mundane 
travel, no fruit of terrestrial observation. All that was of 
the earth, earthy. Yet Penn's description of the climate 
of the region immediately about Philadelphia in 1683 is of 
rare historical interest as a basis for the study of compara- 
tive meteorology; and his account of the social customs, 
racial conditions, and modes of government among the 
Indians of his time has no superior in English literature. 
It may be excelled by the Narratives of the French Jesuits, 
who saw the Mississippi long before he ever saw the Dela- 
ware, but with that exception he stands supreme. 

Of the climate in his own time Penn says : 

For the seasons of the year, having by God's goodness 
now lived over the coldest and hottest that the oldest liver 

149 



WILLIAM PENN 

iu the province can remember, I can say something to an 
English understanding. 

First of the fall, for then I came in. I found it from 
the 24tli of October to the beginning of December, as we 
have it usually in England in September, or rather like an 
English mild spring. From December to the beginning of 
the month called March, we had sharp frosty weather ; not 
foul, thick, black weather, as our northeast winds bring 
with them in England, but a sky as clear as in the summer, 
and the air dry, cold, piercing, and hungry ; yet I remember 
not that I wore more clothes than in England. The reason 
of this cold is given from the great lakes, which are fed by 
the fountains of Canada. The winter before was as mild, 
scarce any ice at all, while this for a few days froze up our 
great river Delaware. From that month to the month 
called June we enjoyed a sweet spring; no gusts, but gen- 
tle showers and a fine sky. Yet this I observe, that the 
winds here, as there, are more inconstant, spring and fall, 
upon that turn of nature, than in summer or winter. From 
thence to this present month, August, which endeth the 
summer, commonly speaking, we have had extraordinary 
heats, yet mitigated sometimes by cool breezes. The wind 
that ruleth the summer season is the southwest ; but spring, 
fall, and winter, it is rare to want the northwestern seven 
days together. And whatever mists, fogs, or vapors foul 
the heavens by easterly or southerly winds, in two hours' 
time are blown away; the one is followed by the other; a 
remedy that seems to have a peculiar providence in it to 
the inhabitants, the multitude of trees yet standing being 
liable to retain mists and vapors, and yet not one quarter 
so thick as I expected. 

This would not be recognized as the climate of Philadel- 
phia and its neighborhood at the beginning of the twentieth 
century. There is probably no locality on earth where the 

150 



FIRST YEAU IN PENNSYLVANIA 

deforestation of the surrounding country has so banefuUy 
affected the climate as the tide-water estuary of the Dela- 
ware. And these malign conditions seem to culminate at 
the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill. In Penn's 
time the south winds blew over a primeval forest that cov- 
ered all South Jersey. The great trees absorbed the humid- 
ity which the Gulf Stream spreads all along its wake, and 
the southerly and southeasterly breezes reached Philadel- 
phia with all their miasma sucked out of them. Now they 
blow over half -tide lagoons, back-water creeks, and marshes 
fetid with rotting vegetation and morbific with malarial 
germs ; or they sift through hot sand barrens, supporting a 
scrub growth of leafless and half-burned second-crop pine 
or old fields exhausted by slovenly tillage, baked by a bla- 
zing sun or steamed by a hot humidity, and covered with a 
scant shrubbery of dwarf bushes and enfeebled briers 
wherever the sand-drifts will let shrubs grow. 

The result is a climate — or rather the total absence of 
one — that in summer amounts to a vast gridiron for the 
broiling of mankind, while the so-called spring and autumn 
are likely to exhibit three changes of season in forty- 
eight hours. The alleged winter is divided into about three 
parts slush and one part blizzard. This is as different 
from the climate Penn describes as darkness differs from 
light, and it is all due to deforestation. 

In Penn's time the country bounded by the Great Lakes 
on the north, the Appalachian chain on the west, and the 
James on the south was unquestionably a climatic Eden. 
Its forests were the grandest on earth. Its rivers, rivulets, 
and ponds were the clearest and purest water known. Its 

151 



WILLIAM PENN 

seasons came and went each in its good turn, and all be- 
cause Nature had her own way. The changed conditions 
now appallingly exemplify the truth of the Good Book 
where it says that the sins of the parents shall be visited 
upon the children, even to the third generation. The 
parents, in their reckless cupidity and thoughtless greed, 
slaughtered the noble forests of this splendid region indis- 
criminately, without reason for the present or care for the 
future. It was a colossal crime. And their children — not 
alone to the third, but to untold generations — must ex- 
piate it. 

Penn's description of the Indians as he saw them is, a.s 
already intimated, his most valuable and enduring contri- 
bution to historic literatui'e. It can not be abbreviated. It 
must be read as a whole. He says : 

They are generally tall, straight, well built, and of 
singular proportion; they tread strong and clever, and 
mostly walk with a lofty chin. Of complexion black, but 
by design, as the gypsies in England. They grease them- 
selves with bear 's fat clarified ; and using no defense against 
sun and weather, their skins must needs be swarthy. Their 
eye is little and black, not unlike a straight-looked Jew. The 
thick lip and flat nose, so frequent with the East Indians 
and blacks, are not common to them ; for I have seen 
as comely European-like faces among them, of both sexes, 
as on your side the sea; and truly an Italian complexion 
hath not much more of the white ; and the noses of several 
of them have as much of the Roman. 

Their language is lofty, yet narrow; but, like the He- 
brew in signification, full. Like short-hand in writing, one 
word serveth in the place of three, and the rest are sup- 
plied by the understanding of the hearer; imperfect in 

152 



FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

their tenses, wanting in their moods, participles, adverbs, 
conjunctions, interjections. I have made it my business to 
understand it, that I might not want an interpreter on any 
occasion ; and I must say that I know not a language spoken 
in Europe, that hath words of more sweetness or greatness, 
in accent and emphasis, than theirs; for instance, Octo- 
cockon, Rancocas, Oricton, Shak, Marian, Poquesian, all 
which are names of places, and have grandeur in them. Of 
words of sweetness, anna is mother, issimus, a brother; 
neteap, friend ; usqueoret, very good ; pane, bread ; yneisa, 
eat ; matta, no ; hatta, to have ; payo, to come ; Sepassen, 
Passijon, the names of places; Tamane, Secane, Menanse, 
Secatareus, are the names of persons. If one ask them for 
anything they have not, they will answer, matta ne hatta, 
which, to translate, is, ' Not I have, ' instead of ' I have not. ' 
Of their customs and manners there is much to be 
said. I will begin with children. So soon as they are born 
they wash them in water, and while very young, and in cold 
weather to choose, they plunge them in the rivers to hard- 
en and embolden them. Having wrapt them in a clout, 
they lay them on a strait thin board a little more than the 
length and breadth of the child, and swaddle it fast upon 
the board to make it straight; wherefore all Indians have 
flat heads; and thus they carry them at their backs. The 
children will go very young, at nine months commonly. 
They wear only a small clout round their waist till they are 
big. If boys, they go a-fishing till ripe for the woods, which 
is about fifteen. Then they hunt; and, having given some 
proofs of their manhood by a good return of skins, they 
may marry : else it is a shame to think of a wife. The girls 
stay with their mothers, and help to hoe the ground, plant 
corn, and carry burthens; and they do well to use them to 
that, while young, which they must do when they are old; 
for the wives are the true servants of the husbands : other- 
wise the men are very affectionate to them. 

153 



WILLIAM PENN 

When the young women are fit for marriage, they wear 
something upon their heads for an advertisement, but so as 
their faces are hardly to be seen but when they please. The 
age they marry at, if women, is about thirteen and four- 
teen; if men, seventeen and eighteen. They are rarely 
older. 

Their houses are mats or barks of trees, set on poles in 
the fashion of an English barn, but out of the power 
of the winds, for they are hardly higher than a man. They 
lie on reeds or grass. In travel they lodge in the woods 
about a great fire, with the mantle of duffils they wear by 
day wrapt about them, and a few boughs stuck round them. 

Their diet is maize or Indian corn divers ways pre- 
pared, sometimes roasted in the ashes, sometimes beaten 
and boiled with water, which they call homine. They also 
make cakes not unpleasant to eat. They have likewise 
several sorts of beans and peas that are good nourishment: 
and the woods and rivers are their larder. 

If an European comes to see them, or calls for lodg- 
ings at their house or wigwam, they give him the best place 
and first cut. If they come to visit us, they salute us with 
an Itah, which is as much as to say, ''Good be to you!" 
and set them down, which is mostly on the ground, close to 
their heels, their legs upright ; it may be they speak not 
a word, but observe all passages. If you give them any- 
thing to eat or drink, well, for they will not ask; and, be 
it little or much, if it be with kindness, they are well pleased : 
else they go away sullen, but say nothing. 

They are great concealers of their own resentments, 
brought to it, I believe, by the revenge that hath been prac- 
tised among them. In either of these they are not exceeded 
by the Italians. A tragical instance fell out since I came 
into the country. A king's daughter, thinking herself 
slighted by her husband in suffering another woman to lie 
down between them, rose up, went out, plucked a root out 

154 



FIRST YEAK IN PENNSYLVANIA 

of the ground, and ate it, upon which slie immediately 
died; and for which, last week, he made an offering to her 
kindred for atonement and liberty of marriage, as two others 
did to the kindred of their wives, who died a natural death : 
for till widowers have done so, they must not marry 
again. Some of the young women are said to take undue 
liberty before marriage for a portion ; but when married, 
chaste. . . . 

But in liberality they excel. Nothing is too good for 
their friend. Give them a fine gun, coat, or other thing, it 
may pass twenty hands before it sticks : light of heart, 
strong affections, but soon spent : the most merry creatures 
that live : they feast and dance perpetually ; they never 
have much, nor want much. Wealth circulateth like the 
blood. All parts partake ; and though none shall want what 
another hath, yet exact observers of property. Some kings 
have sold, others presented 'me with several parcels of land. 
The pay or presents I made them were not hoarded by the 
particular owners ; but the neighboring kings and their 
clans being present when the goods were brought out, the 
parties chiefly concerned consulted what, and to whom, 
they should give them. To every king, then, by the hands 
of a person for that work appointed, is a proportion sent, 
so sorted and folded, and with that gravity which is admira- 
ble. Then that king subdivided it in like manner among 
his dependents, they hardly leaving themselves an equal 
share with one of their subjects : and be it on such occasions 
as festivals, or at their common meals, the kings distribute, 
and to themselves last. They care for little, because they 
want but little : and the reason is, a little contents them. In 
this they are sufficiently revenged on us. If they are igno- 
rant of our pleasures, they are also free from our pains. 
They are not disquieted with bills of lading and exchange, 
nor perplexed with Chancery suits and Exchequer reckon- 
ings. We sweat and toil to live. Their pleasure feeds 

155 



WILLIAM PENN 

them ; I mean their hunting, fishing, and fowling, and this 
table is spread everywhere. They eat twice a day, morning 
and evening. Their seats and table are the ground. Since 
the Europeans came into these parts they are grown great 
lovers of strong liquors, rum especially ; and for it exchange 
the richest of their skins and furs. If they are heated with 
liquor, they are restless till they have enough to sleep. 
That is their cry, "Some more, and I will go to sleep"; 
but, when drunk, one of the most wretched spectacles in 
the world. 

In sickness, impatient to be cured, and for it give any- 
thing, especially for their children, to whom they are ex- 
tremely natural. They drink at those times a teran or 
decoction of some roots in spring water; and if they eat 
any fiesh, it nuist be of the female of any creature. If they 
die, they bury them with their apparel, be they man or 
woman, and the nearest of kin tiing in something precious 
with them, as a token of their love ; their mourning is black- 
ing of their faces, which they continue for a year. They 
are choice of the graves of their dead : lest they should be 
lost by time, and fall to common use, they pick off the 
grass that grows upon them, and heap up the fallen earth 
with great care and exactness. 

These poor people are under a dark night in things 
relating to religion, to be sure the tradition of it : yet they 
believe a God and immortality, without the help of meta- 
physics ; for they say there is a great king, that made them, 
who dwells in a glorious country to the southward of them ; 
and that the souls of the good shall go thither, where they 
shall live again. Their worship consists of two parts, sacri- 
fice and cantico. Their sacrifice is their first fruits. The 
first and fattest buck they kill, goeth to the fire, where he 
is all burnt, with a mournful ditty of him who performeth 
the ceremony, but with such marvelous fervency and labor 
of body that he will even sweat to a foam. The other part 

156 



FIRST YEAH IN PENNSYLVANIA 

is their cantico, performed by round dances, sometimes 
words, sometimes songs, then shouts ; two being in the mid- 
dle who begin, and, by singing and drumming on a board, 
direct the chorus. Their postures in the dance are very 
antic and differing, but all keep measure. This is done 
with equal earnestness and labor, but great appearance of 
joy. In the fall, when the corn cometh in, they begin to 
feast one another. There have been two great festivals 
already, to which all come that will. I was at one myself. 
Their entertainment was a great seat by a spring under 
some shady trees, and twenty bucks, with hot cakes of new 
corn, both wheat and beans, which they make up in a square 
form, in the leaves of the stem, and bake them in the ashes, 
and after that they fall to dance. But they who go must 
carry a small present in their money ; it may be sixpence, 
which is made of the bone of a fish ; the black is with them 
as gold; the white silver; they call it wampum. 

Their government is by kings, which they call sachama, 
and those by succession; but always of the mother's side. 
For instance, the children of him who is now king will not 
succeed, but his brother by the mother, or the children of 
his sister, whose sons (and after them the children of her 
daughters) will reign, for no woman inherits. The reason 
they render for this way of descent is, that their issue may 
not be spurious. 

Every king hath his council, and that consists of all the 
old and wise men of his nation, which perhaps is two hun- 
dred people. Nothing of moment is undertaken, be it war, 
peace, selling of land, or traffic, without advising with them, 
and, which is more, with the youn^ men, too. It is ad- 
mirable to consider how powerful the kings are, and yet 
how they move by the breath of their people. I have had 
occasion to be in council with them upon treaties for land, 
and to adjust the terms of trade. Their order is thus : The 
king sits in the middle of an half -moon, and has his council, 

157 



WILLIAM PENN 

the old and wise, on each hand. Behind them, or at a little 
distance, sit the younger fry in the same figure. Having 
consulted and resolved their business, the king ordered 
one of them to speak to me. He stood up, came to me, and 
in the name of the king saluted me, then took me by the 
hand, and told me that he was ordered by his king to speak 
to me, and that now it was not he but the king who spoke, 
because what he should say w^as the king's mind. He first 
prayed me to excuse them, that they liad not complied with 
me the last time. He feared there might be some fault in 
the interpreter, being neither Indian nor English. Be- 
sides, it was the Indian custom to deliberate and take up 
much time in council before they resolved ; and that, if the 
young people and owners of the land had been as ready 
as he, I had not met with so much delay. Having thus in- 
troduced his matter, he fell to the bounds of the land they 
had agreed to dispose of, and the price ; which now is little 
and dear, that which would have bought twenty miles not 
buying now two. During the time that this person spoke, 
not a man of them was observed to whisper or smile — the 
old grave, the young reverent, in their deportment. They 
speak little, but fervently, and with elegance. I have 
never seen more natural sagacity, considering them without 
the help (I was going to say the spoil) of tradition; and 
he will deserve the name of wise who outwits them in any 
treaty about a thing they understand. When the purchase 
Avas agreed, great promises passed between us of kindness 
and good neighborhood, and that the English and Indians 
must live in love as long as the sun gave light : which done, 
another made a speech to the Indians, in the name of all 
the Sachamakers or Kings; first, to tell them what was 
done ; next, to charge and command them to love the Chris- 
tians, and particularly to live in peace with me and the 
people under my government; that many Governors had 
been in the river ; but that no Governor had come himself 

158 



FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

to live and stay hero before: and having now such an one, 
who had treated them well, they should never do him or his 
any wrong; at every sentence of which they shouted, and 
said Amen in their way. 

The justice they have is pecuniary. In case of any 
wrong or evil fact, be it murder itself, they atone by feasts 
and presents of their wampum, which is proportioned to 
the qualit}^ of the oft'ense or person injured, or of the sex 
they are of. For, in case they kill a woman, they pay 
double; and the reason they render is, "that she breedeth 
children, which men can not do." It is rare that they fall 
out if sober; and if drunk they forgive, saying, "It was 
the drink, and not the man, that abused them. ' ' 

We have agreed, that in all differences between us, six 
of each side shall end the matter. Do not abuse them, but 
let them have justice, and you win tliem. The worst is, 
that they are the worse for the Christians, who have propa- 
gated their vices, and yielded them tradition for ill and 
not for good things. But as low an ebb as these people 
are at, and as inglorious as their own condition looks, the 
Christians have not outlived their sight with all their pre- 
tensions to an higher manifestation. What good then might 
not a good people graft, where there is so distinct a 
knowledge left between good and evil ? I beseech God to 
incline the hearts of all that come into these parts to outlive 
the Ivuowledge of the natives by a fixt obedience to their 
greater knowledge of the will of God; for it were miserable 
indeed for us to fall under the just censure of the poor 
Indian conscience, while we make profession of things so 
far transcending. 

For their original. I am ready to believe them of the 
Jewish race, I mean of the stock of the ten tribes, and that 
for the following reasons : first, they were to go to a land 
not planted nor known, which to be sure Asia and Africa 
were, if not Europe; and He who intended that extraor- 

159 



WILLIAM PENN 

dinary judgment upon them might make the passage not 
uneasy to them, as it is not impossible in itself from the 
easternmost parts of Asia to the westernmost of America. 
In the next place, I find them of the like countenance, and 
their children of so lively resemblance, that a man would 
think himself in Duke's Place or Berry-street, in Loudon, 
when he seeth them. But this is not all: they agree in 
rites; they reckon by moons; they offer their first fruits; 
they have a kind of feast of tabernacles; they are said to 
lay their altar upon twelve stones ; their mourning a year ; 
customs of women ; with many other things that do not now 
occur. So much for the natives. Next, the old planters 
will be considered in this relation, before I come to our 
colony and the concerns of it. 

The historical value of this description is threefold: 
First, it is the record of personal observation by a man who 
always wrote the truth. Second, it views the Indians in 
their purely social aspect and treats of them without 
prejudice or romance. Third, it is the only impartial ac- 
count we have of the Indians of the seventeenth century 
in the English language. 

It is extremely interesting to compare Penn's descrip- 
tion of the Pennsylvania Indians in 1683 with Sir William 
Johnson's paper* on the Iroquois and their neighbors of 
New York and the Northwest in 1771 — eighty-eight years 
apart. The interest and value of this comparison rest in 
the diversity of conditions under which two great men 
viewed the Indians in their respective eras. Each was, in 
his time, the most influential white man the Indians knew 

♦ Letter to Arthur Lee, Philosophical Society, February 28, 1771. 
Printed in Stone's Life of Sir William Johnson, vol. ii, p. 479 et seq. 

IGO 



F i ii ST YEAH IN P E N N S Y L V A N I A 

and the most successful in dealinjj: with them. Each had 
the respect and coulidence of the Indians to a degree far 
beyond any other white man of his day. 

The Indians William Penn knew and described in 1683 
were to all intents and purposes in their primitive state. 
They had seen no white people except the few Dutch and 
Swedish pioneers of the Delaware estuary, and these had 
been too feeble to excite their apprehensions, too few to cor- 
rupt their native morals. 

The Indians Sir William Johnson knew and described 
in 1771 had tasted to the full of the white man's tempta- 
tions ; had been for a century apt pupils in the white man 's 
school of ambition, intrigue, and conquest. They had 
borne a daring and a bloody hand in the ferocious struggle 
of Frank and Saxon for the empire of North America. 

So far as concerned contact with the white race and its 
baneful experiences, the Indians of Penn and the Indians 
of Johnson stood at antipodes. Penn knew the Indians 
and described them just before Frontenac began his vast 
scheme of converting them into a weapon of French power. 
Sir William Johnson knew and described them just after 
the last vestige of French power had fallen with Montcalm. 
The two men were equally observant, equally conscientious, 
and equally truthful. They were also agreed in their esti- 
mates of the Indian character and in their conceptions as 
to the right method of dealing with them — save only the 
one important distinction that Sir William's basis of 
thought was purely secular, while William Penn's was a 
convenient cooperation of the spiritual with the temporal ; 
of religion with an eye to business. Yet they agreed on 
12 161 



WILLIAM PENN 

most points of conduct. Above all, they were unanimous 
in the doctrine that to be just with the Indians was the way 
to win them. 

Next in historical importance is Penn's brief account 
of the primitive white settlers who preceded him half a 
century as the real pioneers of his colony. Of them he 
says: 

The first planters in these parts were the Dutch, and 
soon after them the Swedes and Finns. The Dutch applied 
themselves to traffic, the Swedes and Finns to husbandry. 
There were some disputes between them for some years; 
the Dutch looking upon them as intruders upon their pur- 
chase and possession, w'hich was finally ended in the sur- 
render made by John Rizeing, the Swedish Governor, to 
Peter Styvesant, Governor for the States of Holland, 
anno 1655. 

The Dutch inhabit mostly those parts of the province 
that lie upon or near the Bay, and the Swedes the Freshes 
of the River Delaware. There is no need of giving any 
description of them, who are better loiown there than here ; 
but they are a plain, strong, industrious people, yet have 
made no great progress in culture, or propagation of fruit- 
trees ; as if they desired rather to have enough than plenty 
or traffic. But I presume the Indians made them the more 
careless by furnishing them with the means of profit, to 
wit, skins and furs for rum and such strong liquors. They 
kindly received me as well as the English, who were few 
before the people concerned with me came among them. I 
must needs commend their respect to authority, and kind 
behavior to the English. They do not degenerate from the 
old friendship between both kingdoms. As they are people 
proper and strong of body, so they have fine children, and 
almost every house full : rare to find one of them without 

162 



FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

three or four boys and as many girls; some six, seven, and 
eight sons. And I must do them that right, I see few young 
men more sober and laborious. 

During the winter of 1683- '84 Penn lived in the Lseti- 
tia Cottage, where he kept "bachelor's hall," his servants 
being the only other members of the household. He also 
put the finishing touches upon Pennsbury Manor. There 
is evidence in his correspondence of this period that he 
intended to bring his family to this country in the summer 
of 1684 and take up his residence at the manor perma- 
nently. Its first occupant, however, was James Harrison, 
steward of his estate and, in general, his business manager — 
a capable, diligent, and honest man. At home Penn is 
described by a contemporary as 

Most hospitable to high and low alike, never without a 
friend or two at meals, and his house [the cottage] , which 
was small, always filled with sojourning guests. All he 
possessed was at his neighbors' service; horses, vehicles, 
barge, or any utensil. His conversation was wholesome to 
the spirit and gave refreshment to the mind. He loved wit 
and was fond of jest so it should be decorous and chaste. 
Of good things he had store, but besides water, his only 
drink was wine, always of good vintage, and sometimes a 
bottle of sack. 

His habit was to dispose of business, public and private, 
in the forenoon; the rest of the day for walks about the 
town to view improvements and advise the people. Some- 
times to Pennsbury for several days. In despatch of busi- 
ness he was quick to the point and liked not small disputings 
or petty bargaining. Rather than submit to such, he would 
either terminate the matter at once or yield to the impor- 

163 



WILLIAM PENN 

tuuity of the other party — mostly the last. For money lie 
had no care but as means to the end ; and when he wanted to 
know how much he had or what w^as due he must fain ask his 
steward or his deputy. Of accounts by hand he kept none 
of his own, trusting all to them w^ho served him. With too 
shrewd persons or those covetously inclined he was impa- 
tient and often suspicious. No one he knew to have cheated 
could ever gain his trust more ! But no one was misled or 
cheated more than he.* 

Penn had now completed his preparations. He had 
arranged, as soon as navigation should begin in the Dela- 
ware, for Thomas Lloyd to go to England in the first ship, 
file his answer to the claims of Lord Baltimore, and then 
return to Pennsylvania, bringing with him Mrs. Penn and 
the children. Provision had also been made for not less 
than twenty ships, to bring about three thousand emigrants 
during the summer of 1684. Most of these were Quakers, 
but some were Palatinate Germans and a few Huguenots — 
taking time by the forelock and fleeing from the impending 
butcheries of 1685. 

All these plans were upset. In April, Lord Baltimore 
made formal demand upon Penn to relinquish all claim of 
sovereignty south of the fortieth parallel. Penn replied in 
conformity with the agreement of the previous year, de- 
clining to accede, and urging that the question be left in 
statu quo pending adjudication by the highest court of Eng- 
land. To this Lord Baltimore responded by an aggressive 
assertion of his claim under the patent of Charles I to his 
grandfather, and, as he expressed it, "to make tangible 

* Letter of John Watson. 
1 64 



FIRST YEAK IN PENNSYLVANIA 

subject of appeal," he sent a force of Maryland militia, 
under Colonel George Talbot, to seize the disputed strip of 
territory, eject the officials Penn had commissioned, and 
claim the sovereignty for the colony of Maryland. 

On the face of the papers, Lord Baltimore was right. 
As we have already remarked, the whole trouble grew out 
of an error of latitude, amounting to about a quarter of a 
degree; or, say, fifteen geographical miles. The error was 
Penn's. He had been led into it mainly by the advice of 
John Fenwick, whose fame survives in South Jersey to this 
day, partly in " Fenwick 's Island" and partly as "Old 
Quaker John" — probably as singular a compound of 
stupidity, hypocrisy, and greed as ever lived. But there 
was a saving clause upon which, long afterward, the con- 
troversy was decided. The geographical authority upon 
which the Maryland grant was made to old Lord Baltimore 
by Charles I in 1632 was Captain John Smith's Map of 
Virginia. From this map, also, the southern boundary of 
Penn 's grant was located. They might have corrected it by 
the then existing Dutch chart of the Delaware — which was 
true by observation — but no one seems to have thought 
of that. The saving clause was a phrase in Penn 's petition, 
which was part of the grant and charter. This phrase was 
"a point on the Delaware River, west bank, twelve miles 
above Newcastle." 

It made some difference whether this "twelve miles" was 
measured on a due north and south line or on the line of 
the river channel ; it was the difference between the hypoth- 
enuse and the side of a right-angled triangle. In the end 
the channel line was declared to be the base, and that 

165 



WILLIAM PENN 

brought the southern boundary of Penn's grant several 
miles south of the fortieth parallel. 

This is as far as our space permits us to go in detail of 
the controversy. For the rest, let it be said, simply, that 
Penn vigorously remonstrated against Lord Baltimore 's ag- 
gression, and, among other expedients, addressed a letter to 
the Duke of York, adroitly — and, as it proved, successfully 
— framed, to make the duke believe that Lord Baltimore 
had ridiculed the duke's pretensions in conveying the terri- 
tory, and now defied his authority and his influence. This 
letter to the Duke of York was such a marvel of diplomacy 
— addressed as it was to a man destined to be King within 
a year — that we copy it in full. Whether it suggests any- 
thing like "crooking the pregnant hinges of the knee, etc.," 
we leave our readers to decide. But neither Machiavelli nor 
Talleyrand need have been ashamed of it as his own. 

Great Prince : It is some security to me, and an happi- 
ness I must own and honor, that in these my humble and 
plain addresses, I have to do with a prince of so great 
justice and resolution ; one that will not be baffled by crafts 
nor blinded by affection; and such a prince, with humility 
be it spoken, becometh the just cause I have to lay before 
him. 

Since my last, by which I gave the Duke to understand 
that the Lord Baltimore had sent agents to offer terms to 
the people, to draw them from their obedience of this gov- 
ernment, where his Royal Highness had placed them, and 
that without having any special order for the same, it hath 
pleased that lord to commissionate Colonel George Talbot 
to come, with armed men, within five miles of New Castle 
town, there upon a spot of ground belonging to one Ogle, 
that came with Captain Carr, to reduce that place by force, 

166 



FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

erected a fort of the bodies of trees, raised a breastwork, 
and palisaded the same, and settled armed men therein. 
The president of that town and county, together with the 
sheriff and divers magistrates and inhabitants of the same, 
went to the said fort, demanded of Colonel George Talbot 
the reason of such actions, being a warlike invasion of the 
right of his majesty's subjects, never in his possession. He 
answered them, after having bid them stand off, (present- 
ing guns and musquets at their breasts) that he had the 
Lord Baltimore's commission for what he did. The presi- 
dent being an old experienced man, advised him to depart, 
and take heed how he obeyed such commands as these were, 
since acting in such a way of hostility against the right of 
his majesty's subjects not in rebellion, and not by his com- 
mission, might cost him and his lord dear in the issue. He 
still refused, upon which proclamations were made in the 
king's name, that they should depart, but he, with some 
more, would not depart but in the name of Lord Baltimore, 
refusing to go in the king's name: and there the garrison 
is kept, the commander and soldiers threatening to fire 
upon and kill all such as shall endeavor to demolish the 
block-house, and say they have express commands so to do 
from that lord. 

How far these practises will please the king or duke, is 
not fit for me to say; but if not mistaken, I shall be able 
to make evident by law, he hath also canceled his allegiance 
to the king herein, and exposed himself to his mercy for 
all he hath in the world. 

I hear he is gone for England, and was so just as to 
invite me, by a letter in March, delivered in the end of 
April, informing me that towards the end of IMarch, he 
intended for England. This was contrived that he might 
get the start of me, that making an interest before I arrived, 
he might block up my way, and carry the point. But such 
arts will never do, where there is no matter to work upon, 

167 



WILLIAM PENN 

which I am abundantly satisfied they will not, they can not 
find in the duke, with whom I know he hath great reason 
to ingratiate his cause and malconduct, if he could. 

I am following him as fast as I can, though Colonel 
Talbot, since his departure, threatened to turn such out by 
violence as would not submit to him, and drive their stock 
for arrears : believing that the worse the better, I mean, the 
more illegal and disrespectful he and his agents are to his 
majesty and royal highness, and humble and patient I am, 
they will the more favor my so much abused interest. 

I add no more, but to pray that a perfect stop be put 
to all his proceedings till I come, who hope to show myself 
the king's dutiful, and (in reference to his American em- 
pire,) not unuseful subject, and as well as the duke's most 
faithful friend, to serve him to my power. 

WILLI AI\r PENxN. 
Philadelphia, the Sth of the 4th month (June), 16S4. 

The reader may or may not at first sight observe one 
striking feature of this letter. It will be noted that, while 
it is addressed directly to the "Great Prince," the second 
person singular of the pronoun is not used anywhere, but 
the individual to whom the letter is addressed appears 
throughout in the third person. By this means Penn 
evaded the law of George Fox's ''second commandment" 
to "thee and thou all men and women without any respect 
to rich or poor, great or small ! ' ' 

We have already noted that in his letter to the Earl of 
Orrery, when in jail at Cork, he used the form "you" and 
"your," instead of "thee" and "thou" and "thy," 
throughout. The third person also occurred in his re- 
monstrance addressed to Lord Baltimore, the familiarity 
of "thee" and "thou" being thus evaded by use of the 

168 



FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

third person in two cases and wholly disused in the other 
one. This might lead to the inference that, though in ordi- 
nary circumstances regulating his daily walk and conversa- 
tion by George Fox's special decalogue, he could talk and 
write like the rest of the Christian world whenever it was 
necessary, particularly if he happened to want something 
very much. 

About the end of April Lord Baltimore had notified 
Penn of his intention to go to England for the purpose of 
looking after his end of the boundary dispute in person. 
At first the Governor did not permit this news to alter 
his plans, and even as late as June he sent Captain Mark- 
ham across the ocean as bearer of his letter to the Duke of 
York. But the idea, that if one proprietor was to be present 
at court the other ought to be, weighed upon him, and 
finally he determined to meet Lord Baltimore in England. 
Appointing Thomas Lloyd deputy-governor and providing 
that Captain Markham should succeed Lloyd as secretary 
upon his return from England, Penn embarked in the En- 
deavor, a two-masted, ketch-rigged vessel of 140 tons, and, 
after an uneventful passage of fifty days, landed in Sussex, 
within a few miles of his home at Worminghurst. This 
was doubtless a pleasant surprise to his wife and children, 
who were daily expecting to sail for Pennsylvania, and had 
no advices of his intended return to England. 

Readers of William Penn's somewhat copious works 
have doubtless noticed the total absence of anything that 
might be viewed as statistical information. Of course, we 
refer now to his writings on secular subjects only. The- 
ology, which embraced the greater part of his literary 

169 



WILLIAM PENN 

product, being neither an exact science nor even a litera- 
ture of precision, does not admit of statistical accuracy. 
But it might have been expected that when he wrote con- 
cerning his province he would give here and there a bit 
of information to indicate its growth and general pros- 
perity. Nothing of that kind, however, is to be found. 
Indeed, the absence of it is so universal as to suggest an 
aversion to statistics or exact writing in any form. 

The nearest approach to statistics occurs occasionally 
in his letters to other Quakers, where he says of certain 
''great meetings" that "above two thousand were present," 
etc. But when he writes of a ship-load of emigrants he 
calls them "a goodly number," or "a seeming multitude," 
or "a throng of welcome souls." This affords a really 
curious glimpse of character. It may have been a native 
repugnance to dry and unmystical things, or it may have 
become second nature to a mind aerated and etherealized 
by years of spiritual contemplation and sectarian zeal. In 
either case his writings, whether of travel or of coloniza- 
tion, are almost stripped of permanent historical value 
through persistent generalizations. His disregard of exact 
material sometimes seems almost studied. If the writer 
had been Fox, this would have been a matter of course. 
Fox preached with all the vehemence he could muster that 
all kinds of worldly affairs were sinful, and that the only 
true Christian was he who partook least of things earthly — 
perfection, of course, being reached only by him who 
prayed all the time and worked not at all. But Penn did 
deal with the affairs of the earth, and most important ones 
they were. And yet the most that students of history de- 

170 



FIRST YEAR IN PENNSYLVANIA 

sire to know of him and them must be found in the writings 
of others. 

From this point of view, the most careful and intelli- 
gent writer of Penn's time was John Oldmixon, who, in 
his History of the Stuarts, refers as follows to Penn's re- 
turn to England in 1684 : 

Mr. Penn left his colony in a most prosperous condi- 
tion. Though settled but three years, it already had up- 
wards of seven thousand white people. The number of in- 
habitants of Swedish or Dutch extraction was computed at 
three thousand ; but this included some settlements of West 
Jersey. His new capital, called Philadelphia, though not 
a tree was felled in it until 1681, had in 1684 upwards of 
three hundred houses and more than 2,500 residents. The 
natives (Indians) in the province were estimated by Mr. 
Penn himself at six thousand, and there were also about 
eight hundred African slaves. 

Oldmixon wrote this statement about the year 1700, and 
evidently derived the information from Penn himself. 



171 



CHAPTER VII 

1G84-1G8G 

AT THE COURT OF JAMES II 



CHAPTER VII 

1684-1G8G 
AT THE COURT OF JAMES II 

When Pemi left Philadelphia he fully expected to se- 
cure a final settlement of the boundary dispute within a 
year. The instructions to his steward before leaving, 
which were amplified by letters afterward, indicated an 
intention and expectation of being in America during the 
summer of 1685, accompanied by his family and bringing 
with him ' ' all the household goods endeared by association 
or otherwise worth the cost of transport." 

Some of his biographers have maintained that in leav- 
ing the colony when he did he made a mistake, aggravated 
in an almost fatal degree by the excessive prolongation of 
his absence. They argue that, as the boundary dispute was 
not settled definitely by his presence at court, and as all 
he was able to accomplish in his lifetime was an order in 
Council restraining Lord Baltimore from aggression pend- 
ing conclusive delimitation, and as that order was obtained 
in about a year after he left the colony, there was no 
adequate reason for his tenacious stay in England from 
1684 to 1699, fifteen years. 

Reasons for this long absence — or rather for the post- 
ponement of his I'etui'u to Pennsylvania' — U})pear from time 
to time in his correspondence with the officials of the colony 

175 



WILLIAM PENN 

and with the steward of liis personal estate. Some of these 
reasons appear sufficient; others little better than trivial 
if not frivolous. But so far as concerns the going to Eng- 
land in the first instance, there can be no doubt of its wis- 
dom. The issue was vital to the welfare of Pennsylvania, 
then and always. A decision had to be the outcome not 
only of argument, but also — and chiefly — of the personal 
influence which Penn could exercise through the Duke of 
York in a degree far exceeding that of his adversary, Lord 
Baltimore. Personal influence could be exerted, of course, 
only by contact and conversation. It would be weakened, 
if not wholly lost, by absence and correspondence. Such 
personal influence could not be delegated to a deputy, 
although the functions and powers of colonial government 
could be delegated. True, no deputy could govern the 
colony as Penn himself could. No one else could hold the 
same commanding rank and compelling prestige among the 
new settlers. But the colony could get along in some sort 
of fashion — as it actually did — with Penn absent. The 
great and vital cause of the disputed boundary had to be 
decided by a tribunal in London, and its decision meant 
in great degree the fate of Pennsylvania. Defense of that 
cause and vindication of Penn's claims absolutely required 
the attendance of the claimant upon the tribunal. All 
these propositions must appear incontestable. 

Penn, after his arrival, lost no time in getting a hear- 
ing. He arrived the first week in October. The next week 
his memorial was before the court, backed by a representa- 
tion from the Duke of York. Among other things the 
memorial recited: 

176 



AT THE COURT OF JAMES II 

The colony of Maryland was founded in 1634. 

The royal patent to Lord Baltimore, dated in 1632, con- 
tained a restriction of the grant, to lands oiot planted or 
in possession of any Christia'n people. Previous to this 
date, the Dutch, under Cornelius May, had sailed up the 
Delaware and asserted a claim to its western shore. They 
planted a colony in 1623, at Fort Nassau, where Timber 
Creek enters the Delaware, a few miles from the mouth 
of the Schuylkill ; and in 1631 they made another settle- 
ment on Lewis Creek, near Cape Henlopen. They made 
two purchases of land from the natives, one of which ex- 
tended from Cape Henlopen to the mouth of the River 
Delaware. 

In 1638, a colony of Swedes arrived under Governor 
Minuit, and erected a fort at the mouth of Minquas River, 
now called the Christeen. The Dutch governor of the New 
Netherlands [now New York] protested against this settle- 
ment, as an encroachment on the rights of the Dutch West 
Indian Company, but he took no effectual measures to re- 
sist it. In 1643, the Swedish government sent two ships 
of war and an armed transport with emigrants, under the 
command of John Printz, who was appointed governor of 
the colony, with instructions to assert, by force of arms, 
the Swedish claim to the whole western shore of the Dela- 
ware River and Bay. The Swedes built three forts, all 
below the Dutch fort, Nassau. 

After some years of altercation between the rival col- 
onists, Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of the New 
Netherlands, in 1655, entered the Delaware with seven 
ships and 750 men and took possession of New Sweden, 
which then became part of the Dutch dominions in 
America. In 1664 the King of England, having conquered 
the Dutch possessions, conveyed the whole territory to the 
Duke of York, who in turn conveyed the former Sw(^dish 
territory on the west side of the Delaware to William 
13 177 



WILLIAM PENN 

Penn. It is clear that the Lord Baltimore never at any 
time had jurisdiction of this territory. 

The tribunal (the Committee of Privy Council on Trade 
and Plantations) on November 13, 1685, rendered judg- 
ment as follows : 

By Order in Council, this Thirteenth Day of Novem- 
ber, A. D. 1685, it is made known unto all concerned that the 
Lords of Trade and Plantations, having duly considered 
the grants and patents of the Earl of Baltimore and of Will- 
iam Penn respecting certain territory in dispute, do give 
it as their opinion that the said lands intended to be granted 
by the Lord Baltimore's patent were only cultivated and 
inhabited by savages, and that the part then in dispute, 
was inhabited and planted by Christians, at and before the 
date of the Lord Baltimore's patent, as it had been ever 
since to that time, and continued as a distinct colony from 
that of Maryland, so that the lords offered it as their opin- 
ion, that for avoiding further difference, the tract of land 
lying between the River and Bay of Delaware, and the 
Eastern Sea, on one side, and Chesapeake Bay on the other, 
be divided into two equal parts by a line from the latitude 
of Cape Henlopen to the fortieth degree of north latitude, 
(the south boundary of Pennsylvania, by charter,) and 
that one-half thereof be adjudged to his majesty (viz. 
King James, who, when Duke of York, granted it to Will- 
iam Penn), and the other half remain to the Lord Balti- 
more, as comprised in his charter. 

This decision, however, settled only the status of the 
west bank of the Delaware. It left the question of the 
southern boundary of Pennsylvania open. But, to avoid 
further conflict pending definite settlement, Lord Balti- 

178 



AT THE COURT OF JAMES II 

more was enjoined to keep the peace and to consider the 
line of Susquehanna Fort as the northern limit of his juris- 
diction until such settlement could be effected by proper 
measures. 

This itself was indefinite. A line drawn east and west 
through Susquehanna Fort would be slightly south of the 
fortieth parallel, but still north of the petition line, which 
was "twelve miles north of Newcastle." However, Penn 
had accomplished his inain object, which was the preven- 
tion of Lord Baltimore from the use of armed force and the 
final award of the Delaware territory. 

The adjustment of the southern boundary could be de- 
termined only by actual observation and survey. It is evi- 
dent that the English Government intended to carry this 
out at once. But, for some reason concerning which history 
is silent, it was deferred seventy-eight years, or until 17G3, 
when the result of Mason and Dixon's survey was promul- 
gated. 

Pending these proceedings an event had occurred of 
vast importance to William Penn personally and to Quaker- 
dom in general. This was the accession to the throne as 
James II of the Duke of York, whose friendship had been 
the making of Penn's fortunes. How much more potent 
might his good-will and his help be as King! It was a 
foregone conclusion that Penn would always have a ready 
welcome at court during the reign of James. The Quakers 
were now in their worst state from oppression and persecu- 
tion by the Church of England. A friend at court might 
emancipate them — at all events, could hardly fail to mitigate 
their condition. James was known to be, like Penn, in 

179 



WILLIAM PENN 

favor of universal toleration; though, as has already been 
suggested, from a widely different point of view. 

The King favored toleration for everybody because 
that would include the papists, of whom he himself was 
one, though sworn to ''defend the faith" of the Established 
episcopacy. Penn favored it on general principles pri- 
marily, and because it would emancipate his own sect 
incidentally. But, by tests of exclusion, the Established 
Church had obtained absolute control of Parliament in both 
houses, and fiercely resisted every proposal of toleration 
or enfranchisement. Catholic France under the absolute 
Louis XIV was not more despotic in its government than 
so-called "representative" England under its hide-bound 
and iron-clad Episcopal Parliament. However, the Qua- 
kers still hoped, as did the Catholics, the only material dif- 
ference being that the Catholics wanted toleration as a 
stepping-stone to political control of the state, while all the 
Quakers wanted was to be let alone. 

In this emergency the Quakers wanted Penn to stay in 
England. He was the only member of their sect who could 
get audience of the King, and almost the only one having 
any influence whatever with members of the Council or of 
Parliament. The fact that the American Quakers in the 
new and feeble colony of Pennsylvania needed Penn to 
compose their bickerings and suppress their factions by 
his commanding prestige and tactful will was nothing to 
the Quakers who remained in England. "Perish Pennsyl- 
vania!" they cried; "at least so long as our chestnuts need 
pulling out of the fire." Penn yielded to the importuni- 
ties of the English Quakers, and left his own in America 

180 




JAMES II. 



AT THE COURT OF JAMES II 

to shift for themselves. Thenceforward, for more than a 
dozen years, .his career was part courtier, part Quaker 
preacher, and part "suspect" in England. 

To trace him in detail through all the devious meander- 
ings of this diversified destiny would be not only profitless 
as an historical study, but tiresome as a narrative. We 
have before us a Quaker biography of him — one of the most 
pretentious from the sectarian point of view, and perhaps 
the best. It devotes seventy-eight pages to his operations 
as a Quaker courtier and preacher from 1686 to 1689, and 
eleven pages to his usefulness as the founder of a colony 
and architect of a new commonwealth. And yet that 
biographer is not unjust to his memory. Unquestionably 
the proportion of 78 : 11 fairly represents Penn's own real 
activity as distributed between the two scopes of efi:ort dur- 
ing that dreary period. 

Penn's situation in England at this time and his stand- 
ing as a courtier have been most entertainingly described 
by the author of Historia Quakeriana, published at Am- 
sterdam in 1694 and reprinted in London the next year. 
The author, Gerard Croese, was a Holland Dutchman, 
savant, philosopher, and friend of William of Orange. He 
had been, in fact, a tutor of William in youth ; he was only 
eight years older than the King, and as long as the latter 
lived Croese was his companion, adviser, and friend. His 
view of Quakerism may be taken as representing King Will- 
iam's own opinions. Croese was not a Quaker himself, but 
he was an impartial observer and judicial writer. His 
history runs more to personality than was usual in that 
day, but his judgments of men were always moderate and 

181 



WILLIAM PENN 

apparently just. So far as Penn is concerned, Croese's 
view of him has the peculiar value of being contemporane- 
ous. He says : 

This [the reign of James II] was a troublous time. 
There seemed no escape on any side from suspicion, no se- 
curity of repute, no refuge from calumny. Men met in 
quiet places and spoke in low tones. Among strangers one 
might always be sure that there would be an informer pres- 
ent in some guise. The Quakers, more ostracised and worse 
proscribed than any other sect, naturally suffered most andi 
worst of all ; because while the other sects only traduced, 
vilified, and informed upon each other, they all, with equal 
zeal and like vehemence, traduced, vilified, and informed 
upon the Quakers. 

At such a time no auxiliary could be so valuable as a 
friend at court, possessing the unshaken confidence of the 
King. . . . 

William Penn was greatly in favor with the King — the 
Quaker's sole patron at court — on whom the hateful eyes 
of his enemies were intent. The King loved him as a sin- 
gular and entire friend, and imparted to him many of his 
secrets and counsels. He often honored him with his com- 
pany in private, discoursing with him of various affairs, 
and that not for one but many hours together, and delay- 
ing to hear the best of his peers who at the same time were 
waiting for an audience. One of these being envious, and 
impatient of delay, and taking it as an affront to see the 
other more regarded than himself, adventured to take the 
freedom to tell his majesty that when he met with Penn 
he thought little of his nobility. The King made no other 
reply, than that Penn always talked ingenuously, and he 
heard him willingly. 

Penn, being so highly favored, acquired therieby a num- 
ber of friends. Those also who formerly knew him, when 

182 



AT THE COURT OF JAMES II 

they had any favor to ask at court, came to, courted, and 
entreated Penn to promote their several requests. Penn 
refused none of his friends any reasonable office he could 
do for them, but was ready to serve them all, but more espe- 
cially the Quakers, and these wherever their religion was 
concerned. It is usually thought, when you do me one 
favor readily, you thereby encourage me to expect a second. 
Thus they ran to Penn without intermission, as their only 
pillar and support, who always caressed and received them 
cheerfully, and effected their business by his influence and 
eloquence. Hence his house and gates were daily thronged 
by a numerous train of clients and suppliants, desiring him 
to present their addresses to his majesty. There were 
sometimes there two hundred and more. 

If that be insufficient to indicate the good nature of King 
James toward William Penn, an anecdote related by Queen 
Mary Beatrice, in Agnes Strickland 's History of England 's 
Queens, may be reproduced, even though it has been worn 
threadbare: One day Penn, at audience, kept his hat on, 
seeing which the King promptly took off his own. Penn 
was surprised, and the King explained: "It is the custom, 
here, for only one man to wear his hat ! ' ' The Queen adds 
that "the King, though a devotee of etiquette, was always 
prone to indulge Mr. Penn, whom he dearly liked both for 
his father's sake and his own. Truly, he was a most agree- 
able person." 

Undoubtedly Penn's ready entree at court and the dis- 
position of King James to favor him were exceedingly use- 
ful to those Quakers who preferred the comforts of Eng- 
land, despite persecution, to the freedom of Pennsylvania 
with its physical privations. But the question may occur 

183 



WILLIAM PENN 

here : ' ' Did he not owe a personal debt of fidelity and care 
to those who had broken all home ties, forsaken all home 
comforts in England, and followed him into the wilderness 
— a debt which the English Quakers could not urge?" 
That the colony needed his presence, needed the steadying 
power of his influence to quell the bickerings and check the 
rapacity that had already begun to appear in its councils, 
goes without saying. 

No one else could do that as he could. His deputy, 
Thomas Lloyd, was an able man, honest, faithful, industri- 
ous, and patient. But he could not wield the power of 
Penn because he had not the same force of character, and 
he was not the real head of the colony — only the deputy of 
its real head; and such powers, or, more strictly speaking, 
such prestige, could not be delegated at such a time and 
imder such conditions. Thus, as Penn more and more pro- 
longed his stay in England for the sectarian benefit of 
Quakers there, the material interests and necessities of his 
colonists in Pennsylvania were worse and worse sacrificed. 
The government could not govern. The council and the 
assembly were at odds. The latter impeached Nicholas 
Moore, the presiding judge or chief justice of the colony. 
Penn, upon review of the facts, though he could not revoke 
the action of the assembly in such premises, fully exonerated 
Moore, and afterward appointed him a member of the ex- 
ecutive commission. "I am sorry at heart for such ani- 
mosities," he wrote to Thomas Lloyd. "Can not more 
friendly and private courses be taken to set matters right 
in an infant province whose steps are numbered and 
watched? For the love of God, me, and the poor country, 

184 



AT THE COUKT OF JAMES II 

be not so govcrnmentish, so uoisy and open in your dissatis- 
factions. ' ' 

About this time (1686) the King proclaimed a general 
pardon of all persons in confinement or under bonds for 
non-conformity, or who had been committed under the re- 
vised Conventicle Act. Soon after that, evidently consid- 
ering that he had done as nmch for the English Quakers, 
at sacrifice of those in his own domain, as could reasonably 
be expected, Penn wrote to his steward, James Harrison : 

For my coming over (to Pennsylvania) cheer up the 
people. I press what I can, but the great undertakings that 
crowd me, and to raise money to get away, hinders me yet, 
but my heart is with you, and my soul and love is after you. 
The Lord keep us here in this dark day. Be wise, close, 
respectful to superiors. The King has discharged all 
Friends by a general pardon, and is courteous to us, though 
as to the Church of England, things seem pinching. Sev- 
eral Roman Catholics get much into places in the army, 
navy, and court. 

In August, 1686, having fully determined to return to 
his colony early the next spring, Penn went to Holland, and 
thence to Oldenburg and Rhenish Pfalz, to arrange for a 
large emigration of Holland Dutch and German settlers. 
King James entrusted to him a private diplomatic mission. 
It was to wait upon Prince William of Orange, then Stadt- 
holder, and urge him to join in the movement for universal 
toleration, without exception of any kind. 

Arriving at The Hague, Penn had several interviews 
with Prince William; also with his wife, the Princess Mary, 
who was King James's eldest daughter. He even enjoyed 

185 



WILLIAM PENN 

the distinction of being a guest at the palace for several 
days. 

Both William and Mary were perfectly frank with him 
on the subject of general toleration. They told him that 
they "would not, under any circumstances, consent to the 
enfranchisement of Roman Catholics; that to do so would 
simply invite Romish plots and encourage French intrigue ; 
that no trust could be safely reposed in any Roman Catholic, 
because men of that creed left their consciences in keeping 
of priests and confessors, held no regard for any oath they 
might make to support a Protestant government, and con- 
sidered it their duty to employ any and every expedient — 
no matter how base or treacherous — for the aggrandizement 
of their Church in temporal power. "If they swear 
falsely," exclaimed Princess Mary, "they believe the Pope 
will absolve them ! They fear not God, but the pontiff ! 
For forgiveness of sins they look to a human, not to a 
divine being ! " * 

Then, besides ostracising the Catholics, William and 
Mary were in favor of maintaining the existing tests for 
membership of Parliament. These tests excluded not only 
Catholics, but Protestant dissenters also; in other words, 
eligibility to Parliament was confined wholly to communi- 
cants of the Church of England. 

The House of Commons might, in its own sovereign 
capacity as to qualifications of its membership, admit dis- 
senters, and a good many were seated. But they were orig- 
inal Lutherans or General Presbyterians who had not gone 

* Leven Tan Willem III, by Dr. Montanus. Also Gerard Croese's 
Historia Quakeriana. 

186 



AT THE COURT OF JAMES II 

to the extreme of Puritanism. The Established Churchmen 
in Parliament were, however, careful to keep these favored 
dissenters in a powerless minority, and they would not seat 
any dissenter of intellectual power or mental independence. 
They wanted no more Hampdens, Cromwells, Iretons, Fair- 
faxes, or Algernon Sidneys. As for Quakers, they were, of 
course, out of the question, because members of Parliament 
must make oath of office, must conform to parliamentary 
rules in modes of speech, and must be free from religious 
scruples against measures for public defense. The Qua- 
kers would conform to none of these necessary principles 
of law, because they Avere forbidden by George Fox in his 
special decalogue. Therefore the Quakers were excluded 
by their own whims and chimeras, without other test. Says 
Dr. Montanus in his Conversations of William of Orange : 

Prince William spoke with particular warmth of the 
so-called scruple of the Quakers against force of arms. He 
said it was a doctrine without sanction of any law in statute 
or in morals, human or divine. Those who professed it pre- 
tended to teach more than God had taught in His own Word, 
in Testament Old or New. They pretended to exceed 
Christ in holiness, and to revise the Ten Commandments by 
certain inventions of one Fox; a low, unlettered fellow, 
claiming new apostleship and impiously asserting particu- 
lar revelation from God Himself. 

This, Prince William declared, was a doctrine he would 
never defend ; those who pretended to believe it placed 
themselves without the pale of protection by laws which 
they refused to enforce. As for mere liberty of thinking 
or impunity to worship in any form of choice, it was not 
an affair that concerned the state, provided it did not lead 
to turbulence or disorder. As for persecution for mere 

187 



WILLIAM PENN 

opinion or for doctrine innocently held and preached in 
an orderly or not riotous manner, or for practises not 
overtly lewd or calculated to corrupt public morals, he did 
not countenance it, and it should not be done in any domin- 
ion of his. But between simple toleration of religious be- 
liefs or forms and enfranchisement in the concerns of the 
state there was a wide difference. For his part he should 
always hold with those who held that in religion, as 
in all other human concerns, there was need of law, order, 
and regularity of dispensation. Otherwise, he declared, 
mankind must become a mob and society a rabble. 

In order that the situation at the time of Penn's visit 
to the Prince of Orange and Princess Mary may be clearly 
apprehended, it must be known that, though this was 1686, 
two years before they were crowned King and Queen of 
England, "William and Mary were already recognized as 
the leaders of the English Whigs, or the Liberals of that 
day. In fact, the movement which dethroned James II in 
1688 was already in train tM^o years before, and only a 
favorable opportunity was needed. At any time after the 
end of 1686 William and Mary were ready for the sum- 
mons to assume the sovereignty of England. For that 
reason, though in 1686 William was only the Dutch Stadt- 
holder, he and his wife took as keen an interest in English 
politics as in those of Holland. Therefore Penn, in his 
mission from King James, met with no success and made no 
headway. He did not know what was coming or how soon. 
But William and Mary knew. 

Leaving The Hague, Penn went to Crefeld and Cresheim 
and thence to Hanover. Most of the Germans driven out 
of the Palatinate by Louis XIV the previous year (1685) 

188 



AT THE COURT OF JAMES II 

had taken refuge in Holland, Oldenburg, and Hanover. 
They were willing and anxious to emigrate to America, but 
the ravage of their country had pauperized them. Penn 
helped them all he could, but his own resources were at 
a low ebb then. However, the refugees found aid from 
other quarters. Princess Mary of Orange spent her pin- 
money to provide the refugees in Holland with clothing and 
provisions for the voyage. William of Orange, out of his 
private purse, which was by no means plethoric, chartered 
ships for them. Those who had sought asylum in Han- 
over found similar helping hands in the Princess Sophia 
(mother of King George I) and her husband, Ernest 
Augustus, elector of that state. But not all of these went 
to Pennsylvania. Most of the refugees who were aided by 
Princess Mary, as afterward others by Queen Anne, landed 
in New York, and many of them finally settled in the Hud- 
son and Mohawk Valleys. Those who went from Hanover 
came to Philadelphia and settled Germantown. They were 
the progenitors of that sturdy and thrifty breed now 
known to good fame as ' ' the Pennsylvania Dutch. ' ' * 

* Any one sincerely desiring a personal difficulty with a genuine "Penn- 
sylvania Dutchman " can always accomplish that object by accusing him 
of descent from a German emigrant since the American Revolution, or 
from some Hessian prisoner of war captured during that conflict. They 
maintain that the real, Simon-pure Pennsylvania Dutch are tlie progeny 
of those who came to this country in search of religious freedom between 
1G86 and 1775. They will tell you, among other things, that there were 
no Tories among the Pennsylvania Dutch in the Revolution, and that they 
never became Quakers in the sense of conscientious scruples against self- 
defense. The same is true of the Mohawk and North River Dutch of 
New York. Oldmiion says the reason why Princess Mary sent her pro- 
teges to New York was her fear that " if they went to Pennsylvania, Mr. 
Penn would make Quakers of them! " To which her I)Iuff soldier-hus- 
band replied : " Never fear, Mary ; they have too much sense for that ! " 

189 



WILLIAM PENN 

The episode of l*enn's life iii England during the reign 
of James II that has found most permanent place in history 
is an affair commonly known as the " Blood-money of the 
Taunton Maids," and this itself was an unfounded slander 
rather than an actual event. The circumstances are briefly 
that, when the Duke of Monmouth, in his crazy attempt to 
seize the English Crown (1685), entered the town of Taun- 
ton at the head of his army, after the ' ' victory ' ' at Axmins- 
ter, a concourse of young girls, some of whom were not yet 
in their teens, met him, presented to him a silk flag, and 
strewed flowers in his path. Then in rapid succession came 
Sedgemoor, the capture and execution of Monmouth, the 
Bloody Assizes of the infamous Judge Jeffreys, and the 
rapine of Percy Kirke at the head of his "Tangier Lambs"* 
in the western counties. 

James II may have been a bad and bigoted King; but 

* Upon tlie marriage of Catharine of Braganza to Cliarles II, in 1C61, 
her father, King of Portugal, gave her for dowry the port and fortress of 
Tangier, on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar. A regiment was 
raised in England to garrison the place, and went there in 1G02 — over a 
thousand strong. It was largely recruited from the jails and workhouses 
of England. It remained in garrison at Tangier twenty-two years. Wliile 
there it was recruited from time to time by the same class of men — felons 
of all degrees. Kirke became its colonel about 1075. It returned to 
England in 1(584 and was taken on tlie regular establishment as the Sec- 
ond (Queen's lloyal) Regiment of Foot. The " regimental emblem " 
upon its colors was the Paschal Lamb, whence its sobriquet. In 1685, 
when it was sent to ravage the western counties with orders to " hunt 
down the Monmouth rebels like so many wild beast," it was all that 
might be expected of a regiment composed of convicts, commanded by a 
monster, and trained in a Moorish garrison twenty-two years ! Its career 
in the western counties is the theme of a sickening history — a history of 
murder, arson, pillage, rape, and terror. It is now officially known as 
"The Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment." — See Regimental Rec- 
ords of the British Army. 

190 



AT THE COURT OF JAMES 11 

it would be unfair to hold him responsible for the judicial 
murders of Jeffreys or the military atrocities of Kirke and 
his "Tangier Lambs." The crime of those horrors lies at 
the door of the Established Church, which controlled the 
ministry and demanded the holocaust. In the estimation 
of that Church, Monmouth's offense was not so much his 
rebellion itself as his proclamation promising to enfran- 
chise all dissenters! Rebellion alone might be condoned; 
])ut, in the eyes of the episcopacy, an effort to enfranchise 
dissenters was an enormity to be expiated, even to the 
cradles of children, without benefit of clergy, and every 
prelate, priest, and prebendary of the Established Church 
joined in the savage hue and cry. 

After Jeffreys and Kirke had done their worst and 
paused, glutted with blood or satiated with rape and pillage, 
there were still many offenders left alive. Some of them 
were men. These were given over to Queen Mary of 
Modena. She transported them to penal servitude and 
replenished her pin-money by the sale of them into 
slavery.* 

Other offenders were little girls, too young for the lust 
of Kirke 's "Lambs." It was determined that the parents 
of these should be made to pay blood-money. Of this crime 
— as revolting as ever disfigured a page of history — 
Macaulay, in the first volume, Chapter V, History of Eng- 
land, says : 

* It is a mournful commentary upon those times that the same woman 
could have so pocketed the reeking profits of human misery when in ex- 
ultant power, and then have made the chapter she did in the History of 
England's Queens when in hopeless exile. 

191 



WILLIAM PENN 

The Queen's maids of honor asked the royal permission 
to wring money out of the parents of the poor children, and 
the permission was granted. 

An order was sent down to Taunton that all these little 
girls should be seized and imprisoned. Sir Francis Ware, 
of Hestereombe, the Tory member for Bridgewater, was 
requested to undertake the office of exacting the ransom. 
He was charged to declare in strong language that the maids 
of honor would not endure delay, that they were deter- 
mined to prosecute to outlawry, unless a reasonable sum 
were forthcoming, and that by a reasonable sum was meant 
seven thousand pounds. Ware excused himself from tak- 
ing any part in a transaction so scandalous. The maids of 
honor then requested Wm. Penn to act for them ; and Penn 
accepted the commission. Yet it should seem that a little 
of the pertinacious scrupulosity which he had often shown 
about taking off his hat, would not have been altogether out 
of place on this occasion. 

He probably silenced the remonstrances of his conscience 
by repeating to himself that none of the money which he 
extorted would go into his own pocket; that if he refused 
to be the agent of the ladies, they would find agents less 
humane ; that by complying he should increase his influence 
at the court ; and that his influence at the court had already 
enabled him and might still enable him to render great 
services to his oppressed brethren. The maids of honor 
were at last forced to content themselves witJi less than a 
third part of what they had demanded. 

The only evidence Macaulay had for this charge was a 
letter on file in the state archives office, London. It was 
written by the Earl of Sunderland, then secretary of the 
Home Office in James 's ministry : 

192 



AT THE COURT OF JAMES II 

Whitehall, Feb. 13th, 1685-6. 

Mr, Penne — Her Majesty's Maids of Honour having 
acquainted me, that they designe to employ you and Mr. 
Walden in making a composition with the Relations of the 
Maids of Taunton for the high Misdemeanor they have been 
guilty of, I do at their request hereby let you know that her 
Majesty has been pleased to give their fines to the said 
Maids of Honour, and, therefore, recommend it to Mr. 
Walden and you to make the most advantageous composi- 
tion you can in their behalfe. 

I am, Sir, your humble servant, 

Sunderland P. 

Macaulay's History of England appeared in 1848 — at 
least the volume containing this scandal. Instantly there 
was throughout Quakerdom what the average cockney 
would call "a blue funk." Had their idol been broken? 
Was the only great man the sect ever produced to be tum- 
bled in the mire? Then the controversial flood-gates were 
thrown wide open. 

As to Macaulay, one of his eulogists, Dr. Evan Thomas, 
says that his History of England "was read with as much 
eagerness and delight as a new novel by Scott or Bulwer 
might have been "! Well, why not? It was that, exactly 
— * ' a new novel ' ' ; and far superior, as such, in conception, 
subtlety of plot, and literary style to any novel Scott or 
Bulwer or any one else ever wrote in the English language. 

As a model of English composition Macaulay has no 
superior ; as a guide to the truth of history many equals ! 
He always wrote for an object — party and the peerage. 
He gained his ambition. Macaulay dearly loved a lord. 

14 193 



WILLIAM PENN 

But all his love was lavished upon live lords. He licked 
the hand that fed him — a good trait. He bit the hands that 
did not feed him. Occasionally he made a vicious snap at 
some hand which, having once fed him, had quit. He 
wrote his History of England to defame the Stuarts. This 
was not because he himself hated them, but because he knew 
that defamation of them would please the regime to which 
he must look for his peerage. In this game William Penn 
was played as a very small pawn. The story of the Taun- 
ton maids was but one of many monstrous sins Macaulay 
wished to heap upon the tomb of James II. Penn's chief 
offense in Macaulay 's eyes was that James II had liked 
him. However, the judgment of enlightened mankind had 
been passed upon the Stuarts long before Macaulay saw 
light, and his fierce diatribes added nothing to their just 
obloquy. 

As we remarked, the printing of Macaulay 's onslaught 
upon Penn opened wide the flood-gates of controversial 
Quakerism. Finally, the Right Honorable William E. 
Forster — not himself a Quaker, but the son of one — pub- 
lished an elaborate vindication m which he proved by offi- 
cial records and by the negative testimony of the contem- 
poraneous historian, Oldmixon, that the pardon-broker in 
the case was not William Penn, but one George Penne, a 
person regularly engaged in that sort of business at the 
time. Oldmixon 's negative testimony is as follows, to quote 
only the part applying directly to the case : 

The court [meaning the ministry] was so unmerciful 
that they excepted the poor girls of Taunton, who gave Mon- 
mouth colors, out of their pretended pardon, and every one 

194 



AT THE COURT OF JAMES II 

of them was forced to pay as much money as would have 
been a good portion to each for particular pardons. This 
money, and a great deal more, was said to be for the maids 
of honor, ivhose agent, Brent, the Popish lawyer, had an 
under agent, one Crane of Bridgewater, and 'tis supposed 
that both of them paid themselves very bountifully out of 
the money which was raised by this means, some instances 
of which are within my knowledge. 

It is said that Macaulay, when confronted with Mr. 
Forster's evidence, withdrew his statement implicating 
Penn. But we have not seen the text of his retraction. 
At any rate, or at the worst, the scandal has always seemed 
to us a teapot tempest. Suppose Penn had used his influ- 
ence at court to make the terms easier for the persecuted 
schoolgirls of Taunton ! Was that any worse than using 
his influence to ' ' beg off twenty who had been sentenced by 
Jeffreys, that he might send them to Pennsylvania"? 
Fourteen of those twenty men had been sentenced to death. 
Through Penn's intercession their sentences were com- 
muted to exile. They were all young men in the prime of 
life and vigor. Penn sent them to Pennsylvania and helped 
them to get a new start in life. They had to begin anew 
because all they possessed in England had been confiscated 
and their progeny attainted. Their descendants have been 
governors of American States and Senators in the American 
Congress. One of their descendants, on his mother's side, 
was a general officer in the American Revolution. His name 
was Nathaniel Greene — a name not unknown to the history 
of England ! 

Why, or by what pro(!ess of casuistry, was an ameliora- 

195 



WILLIAM PENN 

tion of the blackmail practised by the "maids of honor" 
upon the hapless Taunton schoolgirls an "infamous act," 
when the saving of fourteen men sentenced to death is 
universally applauded, as it ought to be ? In conclusion of 
this disagreeable subject, it may be said that Macaulay's 
diatribe derived most of its importance and all of its dig- 
nity from the character of its principal refuter, Mr. Fors- 
ter. Without his calm research and his trenchant summing 
up, the shrill chorus of the Quaker defenders of Penn would 
have been as impotent as Macaulay's libel was groundless. 



196 



CHAPTER VIII 

1688-1694 

UNDER WILLIAM OF ORANGE 



CHAPTER VIII 

1688-1094 
UNDER WILLIAM OF ORANGE 

At length the curtain, in the closing days of 1688, rang 
down on the tragic farce of James II 's brief, bloody, and 
dismal reign. And when that curtain rose again the foot- 
lights of destiny shone upon the supreme architect of 
Britain's later glory, the founder of the British Empire, 
William of Orange. It is hard for a student of English 
history to pass over that name with a mere mention. In 
this instance his reign covered such an important period in 
the life of our subject, and his personality was so deeply 
impressed upon the concerns of William Penn, that a brief 
survey of him may not seem wholly digressive. 

To begin with, he was half Dutch, one-quarter English 
Stuart, and one-quarter French Bourbon. His father, 
Prince William II of Orange, was a full-blood Dutchman. 
His mother, Mary Stuart, was a daughter of Charles I by 
Henrietta Maria of France, herself a daughter of Henri 
IV, the first and greatest of the Bourbons. Therefore, if 
ever man was "born to the purple," William III of Eng- 
land was. In the paternal line he was great-grandson of 
William the Silent, founder of the Dutch republic and of 
the House of Orange. Born in 1650, he became ruler of the 
Netherlands at the age of twenty-two, and when twenty- 
eight he had become the acknowledged head of Protestant 

199 



WILLIAM PENN 

Europe, the trusted defender of the faith of Luther against 
Rome, the successor in statecraft and war of Gustav Adolf ; 
and he was the only potentate in Europe whom Louis XIV 
feared. 

In his early career he had always been compelled to 
struggle against heavy odds in the numbers, resources, and 
positions of his foes. He had made little Holland a great 
power in the midst of giant enemies who sought to devour 
her. But his genius had been cramped by lack of means, 
and he often saw the fruits of success vanish before his eyes 
for the want of reserve force after victory. All this was 
changed when the numbers, the wealth, and, above all, the 
impregnable position of England fell into his hands. "At 
last I have a weapon whose blows will hurt!" he said to 
his old friend and tutor. Dr. Montanus, shortly after he 
and Mary had been crowned in 1689. 

That expression indicated the whole character and re- 
vealed the whole nature of the man. He was a soldier and 
a fighter first, statesman and diplomatist afterward. He 
hated Louis XIV personally, and Louis warmly recipro- 
cated. It was not a mere rivalry of great monarchs. It 
was a real, earnest, human hatred, as genuine as the animos- 
ity between two rival butchers in the market-place. Most 
historians describe him as a cold, sullen, almost saturnine 
man. It is true that he was not always gracious to 
courtiers, sometimes not excessively polite to ambassadors. 
But no great commander in the field' — not even Napoleon — 
had the art of winning the confidence and afl'ection of sol- 
diers more than he. Some say he was callous, if not cruel. 
It is true that, with the preliminary peace of Nymwegen 

200 




VVILI.IAM OF ORANGE. 



UNDER WILLIAM OF ORANGE 

in his pocket, he attacked and defeated the French army 
at Nancy and then rather airily remarked that he ' ' couldn 't 
resist the temptation of a good opportunity to give his old 
friend, the Duke of Luxembourg, one more lesson in his 
trade "! 

From early boyhood most of his life had been spent 
in camp, and though his tutors had to take the field 
with him, he was a scholar. He spoke and wrote five 
languages, perhaps more fluently than correctly. He was 
versed in history, philosophy, and fairly in belles-lettres. 
His knowledge of the principles and his equipment in the 
application of international law put to their utmost re- 
sources all the professional diplomatists who ever came in 
contact with him. 

Dealing with his own realm he was a subtle, adroit, and 
far-seeing politician. Nor was he burdened with over- 
scruple. With him the end justified the means much 
oftener than the means the end. The England that he 
took over from James II was a seething hotbed of factions, 
sects, and cabals, all bleeding with wounds of revolution 
or smarting with sores of persecution. Public opinion was 
part animosity and part suspicion, one man against another. 
The only real strong thing upon which he could lean was 
that deathless patriotism of Englishmen as against the rest 
of the world, which the smoke of revolution could not 
smother, the blood of execution could not quench ; a patriot- 
ism that survived alike religious murders and the flames of 
civil war, a love of country that could be soured neither 
by the Catholic atrocities of Bloody Mary nor by the Puri- 
tan cruelties of Oliver Cromwell. 

201 



WILLIAM PENN 

All this William knew. He also knew the inherent devo- 
tion of Englishmen to law, if only they had a share in the 
making of it. Hence he would not accept the throne but 
by election, and would not undertake to reign except by 
covenant, in which the prerogatives of the King, the privi- 
leges of the lords, and the rights of the Commons should 
be defined beyond the possibility of doubtful construction 
or double meaning. 

Though the Protestant leader of Europe, William of 
Orange cared little for religion except as an element in 
statecraft. The only active religious impulse that animated 
him was hatred of Catholicism and a loathing of the papacy. 
So far as any real spiritual sentiment obtained with him, 
he was a Calvinist of the softened type professed by the 
French Huguenots ; and the thing that embittered his soul 
against Louis XIV more than all else was the Revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes and the atrocities that followed it. 
As King of England he swore to defend the faith. That 
faith, in the eyes of the law, was the Established Church. 
That, in his eyes, was a convenient machine for reducing 
religion to a plane of law and regulation. To him that was 
enough. But any other faith — except the Roman Catholic 
and the Quaker — would have suited him as well had it an- 
swered his purpose equally. 

In short, he completely opened his inner heart to Dr. 
Montanus when he said England in his hands was "a 
weapon that would hurt. ' ' How well he wrought out that 
estimate history eloquently shows. Fortunately, his ambi- 
tions all tended toward the common good; his aspirations 
were all toward the destruction of absolutism and the up- 

202 



UNDER WILLIAM OF ORANGE 

building of popiilarism. In short, he lacked little of being 
a republican except humble birth. 

In another work * we described William III as the great- 
est combination of soldier and statesman ever born to the 
purple. He may have been no greater soldier than Gustav 
Adolf, no greater statesman than his own great-grandfather, 
Henri IV of France and Navarre. But he was an abler 
statesman than Gustav and a better soldier than Henri. 

In the art of creating and organizing armies he had no 
superior. His knowledge of what could be made of men 
and what they could do was instinctive. To those who 
voiced him in the Commons when he was preparing for the 
war in Flanders in 1690- '91, he said: "I must reckon with 
armies at least a hundred thousand strong. Half as many 
English will suffice for me!" It was a cold-blooded, 
cruel calculation, but, after seven years of warfare the like 
of which had never been seen before, Ryswick justified his 
estimate. 

He lost some battles, but no campaigns. Defeated by 
Luxembourg at Steenkerke and again at Neerwinden, he 
was ready for another battle before the French had finished 
their Te Deums. ' ' Of all generals, ' ' says Macaulay, ' ' Will- 
iam was best qualified to repair a defeat!" As a strategist, 
he relied more on celerity of movement than on subtlety of 
combination; as a tactician, more on sheer fighting than 
on skilful maneuver. And, above all, he relied upon the 
unshakable pluck and stolid resolution of the English and 
Dutch soldiers he commanded. "They get beaten some- 

* Life of Sir William Johnson, pp. 2, 3, Appletons' Historic Lives 
Series. 

203 



WILLIAM PENN 

times, ' ' he said, ' ' but never routed ; defeated, but never dis- 
heartened. ' ' He had no sense of what is commonly termed 
"the glory of war." He never felt elation in victory. 
To him an army was simply a machine constructed for a 
purpose, and war merely and simply the use of the machine. 
He held the same view of naval force. 

He was the first to apprehend the full meaning of sea 
power. Prior to his time the English navy had been little 
more than a coast-guard. He made of it a universal fight- 
ing machine, like his army. He was also the first sovereign 
of England to take the imperial view of her outlying col- 
onies and possessions. Previous sovereigns had looked upon 
them as gifts to favorites. It was in this particular that 
the change from the Stuarts to William of Orange chiefly 
affected William Penn. In James II Penn had found the 
sentimental friendship of a weak monarch on an unstable 
throne and wearing an uneasy crown. In William he was 
to encounter the cold materialism of one who was every 
inch a king — and, far more than that, every inch a Man — 
whom no sentimentality weakened, no emotions softened 
— a monarch to whom policies and projects were every- 
thing, individuals and personalities nothing. 

William and Mary were joint sovereigns. There had 
been kings and queens before, and other kings and queens 
came after them; but these two were the only conjoint, 
dual sovereign England ever had. Naturally in such an 
arrangement there would be a distribution of functions. 
King William took the state, the navy, and the army. Queen 
Mary took the royal household, the appurtenant estates, 
and the Church. Out of the thirteen years he reigned 

204 



UNDER WILLIAM OF ORANGE 

William was fighting nearly eight years ; sometimes he was 
at home, sometimes in the field. At home he was his own 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the field his own com- 
mander-in-chief. At home or afield he never meddled with 
Queen Mary's Church or household as such. 

In her administration of the Established Church Mary 
hewed to the line. The old ostracism and proscription of 
non-conformists and dissenters continued, but physical or 
corporal persecution ceased. Gradually inhibitions were 
relieved and tests removed until most of the milder non- 
conformists were enfranchised. This, however, was state 
policy rather than religious. William strove to unite the 
nation in political patriotism.* Whenever the Church 
seemed to stand in the way of this consummation he brushed 

* King William soon grew restive under the sullen, surly reactionism 
of the House of Lords, with its iron-bound Episcopal majority. The 
Commons he could manage by the arts of the politician and patronage of 
the Crown, every particle of which he made to count in the game. There 
was no "civil-service reform" about William. Like our own Jackson — 
a character not unlike him in some respects — the " Figliting Dutchman," 
as the English used to call William, believed that to the victors belong 
the spoils. He was anxious to conciliate all dissenters, and particularly 
the advanced Presbyterians or Puritans. They were, he said, the best 
fightiug stock in the kingdom. Bill after bill to remove tests was put 
through the Commons under his influence, only to be beaten in the Lords. 
Finally he took to creating new peers. During his reign of thirteen years 
he added 110 names to the English peerage, not including a list of t)2 
awaiting patents at the time of his sudden death in 1702— all of whom were 
promptly confirmed by Queen Anne. Every one of William's peers was a 
Whig ! Not one Tory was ennobled during his reign. By 1702, when he 
was ready to begin the AVar of the Spanish Succession, the House of 
Lords had become almost evenly balanced, partly by the new Whig peers 
and partly by winning over some of the Tory barons. By "the list of 
thirty-two " above mentioned he intended to turn the scale — and they did 
turn it, but too late for him to enjoy the benefit. Queen Anne, how- 
ever, made good use of them. 

205 



WILLIAM PENN 

it aside, Queen Mary and all. But this was only the secular 
side. He let the spiritual side wholly alone. 

At the beginning Penn had the entree at court — not, in- 
deed, on the familiar basis he enjoyed with James II, but 
his privileges were equal to those of any other subject so 
eminent as he. Moreover, he had the initial advantage of 
a prior acquaintance with King William, already noted. 
Doubtless, but for a single untoward circumstance, Penn 
would have gotten along with William about as well as he 
did with James. 

But one day the exiled King took it upon him to write 
a letter to his old friend William Penn. Among King Will- 
iam 's precautions was that of closely watching ex-King 
James's correspondence. The letter from James to Penn 
was intercepted. The first knowledge Penn had of this 
letter was a summons to appear before the secret committee 
in Council and answer to a charge of treasonable corre- 
spondence. As was natural to and characteristic of him, 
he took the manly course. Rightly thinking that, as the 
complaint personally concerned the King, he was entitled 
to royal audience in the premises, Penn waited on Lord 
^omney (Henry Sidney) of the Council, surrendered to 
him, and requested an immediate hearing in the presence 
of King William. This was arranged for the next day. 
Says Gerard Croese : 

The King greeted him pleasantly and mentioned their 
former interviews at The Hague. Mr. Penn replied with 
suitable deference, speaking in the third person. His head 
was also uncovered. The examination was made by King 
William in person. He produced the letter from King 

206 



UNDER WILLIAM OF ORANGE 

James which had been intercepted. Handing it to Mr. 
Penn, he, the King, said it was, of course, genuine — an 
autograph. Mr. Penn bowed. It was a short letter. King 
William desired Mr. Penn to read it aloud. It contained 
an expression of hope that he (Penn) would come to his 
aid in this his hour of need, referred to the memory of 
his father, the admiral, and their ancient friendship; and 
repeated the hope of assistance. 

Having read it, Mr. Penn handed the letter back to King 
William, who proceeded to interrogate him. The first ques- 
tion was: Why did King James desire him (Penn) to 
"come to his assistance" and "to express to him the re- 
sentments * of his favor and benevolence, ' ' and why King 
James wrote to him? He answered, that it was impossible 
for him to prevent the King from writing to him, if he, the 
King, chose it. 

He was then questioned as to what resentments these 
were, which James seemed to desire of him. He answered 
he knew not, but he supposed the King meant that he 
should endeavor his restoration. Though, however, he 
could not avoid the suspicion of such an attempt, he could 
avoid the guilt of it. He confessed he had loved King 
James, and, as he had loved him in his prosperity, he could 
not hate him in his adversity; yes, he loved him yet for 
the many favors he had conferred on him, though he could 
not join with him in what concerned the state of the king- 
dom. He owned again, that he had been much obliged to 
the King, and that he was willing to repay his kindness by 
any private service in his power ; but that he must observe, 
inviolably and entirely, that duty to the state which be- 

* The original letter was in French. Croese's Ilistoria Quakeriana 
was in Dutch. The translation is Clarkson's. The French words in tlie 
original letter which Clarkson translates " resentments of his favor and 
benevolence" were " renseignements de sa faveur et de sa bienveillance." 
A better translation would be " assurances of his favor and good wishes." 

207 



WILLIAM PENN 

longed to all the subjects of it ; and, therefore, that he had 
never had the wickedness even to think of endeavoring to 
restore him that crown which had fallen from his head, so 
that nothing in that letter could, in anywise, fix guilt upon 
him. 

This manly and ingenuous defense had so much weight 
with the King that he was willing to discharge him, but 
some of the Council objecting, he, to please them, ordered 
him to give bail to appear at the next Trinity term; which 
being complied with, he was then allowed his personal lib- 
erty. 

Shortly after this audience King William went to Ire- 
land, where James had landed at the head of an army fur- 
nished and supplied by Louis XIV, and largely reenforced 
by Irish Catholics. That campaign and its results are for- 
eign to the scope of this work. But during William's ab- 
sence in Ireland the daily affairs of state were lodged in 
the hands of Queen Mary. Acting upon the statements of 
officious, and in some cases base, informers — as, for exam- 
ple, the infamous William Fuller — she caused the arrest 
of eighteen men charged with * ' conspiring to restore James 
Stuart to the throne of England. ' ' The last name on this 
list was that of William Penn ! 

He was arrested and placed under bonds. The case was 
never brought to trial ; but it and other events immedi- 
ately sequent had the effect of retiring Penn from public 
life about three years! During this period he lived in 
close seclusion — most of the time in London. This accusa- 
tion and arrest to all intents and purposes placed Penn 
under surveillance, though it did not deprive him of his 
personal freedom of movement within the limits of Eng- 

208 



UNDER WILLIAM OF ORANGE 

land. But it practically prohibited his return to Pennsyl- 
vania, which he had planned and arranged for before it 
occurred. 

There is evidence, none the less convincing because cir- 
cumstantial, that this detention of Penn in England was 
pursuant to the general policy of King William. Let us 
briefly review the circumstances which constitute the evi- 
dence : First, we may say that King William did not be- 
lieve a word of the charges of treason against Penn. His 
subsequent action, as soon as the emergency was over, 
proves that. 

But William had other subjects besides Penn and Penn- 
sylvania on his mind. No sooner had he driven James II 
and his French army out of Ireland and subdued the in- 
surrection of the Irish Catholics there than he turned 
his attention to the Continent of Europe. Let us, for con- 
venience, say that this was about the end of 1691. Even 
while he was fighting in Ireland William was arranging a 
coalition on the Continent against Louis XIV. It may be 
that by the date of the battle of Boyne Water William had 
already planned the siege of Namur. At any rate, he had 
resolved to invade France as soon as he should have re- 
pulsed the French invasion of Ireland. 

Meantime Louis XIV was neither idle nor unwatchful. 
He knew that William intended to attack him at home; 
and he also knew that William, with the physical power of 
England in his grasp in 1692, would be an altogether dif- 
ferent adversary from the William of 1674, with no force 
but that of Holland at his back. William, he knew, had 
nerve enough to cut the dikes of Holland in 1674, willing to 
15 209 



WILLIAM PENN 

drown his own country if he could drown the French in- 
vader with it. Now, eighteen years later, Louis had to face 
the fact that he must deal with the same desperate soldier, 
reenforced by the best heart, brain, and brawn that Eng- 
land and Holland together could muster. The case was 
different. 

At this moment it occurred to Louis that the North 
American colonies of England might be converted into an 
open joint in William's armor. From 1672 to 1682 Louis 
de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, a godson — and some said 
the natural son — of Louis XIII, had been governor-general 
of French North America. He was a man of wonderful 
talents. While in his first term as governor-general, he had 
pointed out to Louis the expediency of using the northern 
and western Indians as auxiliaries in a grand scheme to 
exterminate the feeble English colonies on the seaboard 
and gain the whole continent for France. Louis did not 
then entertain this project kindly. When it was pro- 
posed (about 1678) the Stuarts ruled England. They 
were little better than vassals of the Bourbon Crown, and 
Louis could see no good reason for destroying the colonies 
of his subsidiary princes. 

But when William became King over these colonies, in 
1689, the case was altered. William was not a vassal of 
Louis. England was no longer a subsidiary state to 
France. Therefore the advice of Frontenac, declined in 
1678, became a subject for favorable consideration in 
1690- '91. Louis sent Frontenac back to Canada clothed 
with every power that the King himself could have exercised 
if there, and the King told the count to employ every Indian 

210 



UNDER WILLIAM OF ORANGE 

from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi for the purpose 
of driving the English into the sea. 

All this was known to William almost as soon as to 
Frontenac. He at once determined to pnt the American 
colonies in a posture of adequate and effective self-defense. 
As for New England, New York, Maryland, and Virginia, 
they could take care of themselves, with a little help in the 
way of arms and munitions from the motherland. The 
weak spot — the open joint in the armor — was Pennsyl- 
vania. That colony was open to attack by Indians from 
the mountains in its rear and by the French navy from the 
estuary of the Delaware in its front. And it had not the 
sign or the symbol of defense! Even the little fort the 
Dutch had made at Gloucester Point in 1655 the Quakers 
had torn down, and they had sold its half dozen brass 
cannon for scrap. 

King William, not wishing to act hastily, sent Captain 
Barent Van Alstyne and Cornells Ten Eyck — Holland 
Dutchmen settled in New York, and whose families he had 
known at home in Holland — on a secret mission to Phila- 
delphia. They were charged to ascertain and report in 
detail as to the disposition of the Pennsylvania colonists to 
provide for their own defense as against either an Indian 
attack from the west or a naval attack by the French in 
the Delaware. They reported, first, that the colonists were 
not prepared for any kind of attack; second, that they 
could not be induced to prepare ; and, third, that if attacked 
they would have to be defended either by royal forces from 
England or by the militia of New York and Maryland. 

It does not require a very intimate acquaintance with 
211 



WILLIAM PENN 

the character of William of Orange to apprehend the effect 
such a report at such a crisis would be likely to produce. 
There could bi no doubt about the truth of the report. 
Captain Van Alstyne was a soldier, quartermaster-general 
of New York colony ; Judge Ten Eyck was city magistrate 
of the infant metropolis" — both men of the highest social 
rank and most inflexible honor. They had, in fact, been 
selected at the instance of Governor Fletcher of New York, 
who remarked that "perhaps the King would give more 
weight to a report made by his own countrymen than if it 
came from Englishmen." 

This report reached King William just after he had 
quelled the insurrection in Ireland and was on the point of 
beginning the memorable "First War in Flanders." The 
comprehensiveness of his plans and the far-reaching scope 
of his projects were not well understood then, and are not 
generally appreciated at their full grandeur even now. 
We may adopt his own analysis of his ambitions and the 
logic of his operations. He said to Dr. Montanus : 

The English have not been a great power because they 
have had no definite foreign policy. In that respect they 
have been thrown hither and thither at the caprice of their 
kings or of Cromwell. But the English, once bent upon a 
definite foreign policy, must become the commanding nation 
of Europe. France is now the predominating power be- 
cause the most solid and least distracted. If the English 
had fought the French as they have fought each other in 
civil war, France would have been humble and England 
great long ago. My purpose is to consolidate England. 
To do that I must unite Englishmen against France. Here- 
tofore they have been allied with the French, their natural 

212 



UNDER WILLIAM OF ORANGE 

enemies, against the Dutch, their natural friends. I will 
put an end to all that. I will try conclusions with Louis 
by land and sea to the bitter end. That end will be the 
exaltation of England and the abasement of France. In 
the train of all that will come supremacy in commerce, col- 
onization, and wealth of the realm. The first step was to 
quiet Ireland. That is done. The next, to satisfy Scot- 
land. That will come, with time and patience. Then the 
British Islands will rule the world.* 

Nothing less than this, pursues Dr. Montanus, was the 
ambition that inspired the soul of the King. He discoursed 
about it without passion, without zeal, but coldly, as a man 
would speak of his daily affairs. 

A statesman of William's stature and a soldier of his 
quality was not likely to leave any point in his long line 
helplessly open to attack. To him, first of English kings, 
the colonies were a military factor in the realm — sources 
of strength or of weakness, according to circumstances. 
Pennsylvania, under Quaker rule, was a weak spot. Will- 
iam resolved to make it strong. He therefore issued an 
order in Council, which reached these shores in November, 
1692, suspending the executive council of Pennsylvania 
and placing the colony under command of Colonel Benja- 
min Fletcher, Governor of New York. The governor was 
clothed with full power to take such measures as might be 
needful to put the province and its approaches in an ade- 
quate state of defense. The King suggested — though he 
did not order — that it would be best, if possible, to main- 
tain the representative assembly and operate through it in 

♦ Conversations of William III. 

213 



WILLIAM PENN 

the raising of money and supplies. But Fletcher was 
authorized, if the assembly should refuse to act, to dissolve 
it and place Pennsylvania under martial law. 

Every Quaker historian has denounced this measure as 
"tyranny," "despotism," "usurpation" — in short, has ex- 
hausted the thesaurus in search for synonyms of that mean- 
ing. As a matter of fact, it was wise, salutary, and 
patriotic. It was made indispensable by the pusillanimity 
and parsimony of the Quakers themselves. The Indians of 
Count Frontenac and the buccaneers of Jean Bart could 
not be persuaded to a policy of peace by Saltmarsh's In- 
ward Light or by George Fox's special decalogue. They 
needed cannon-balls or musketry, and such King William 
proposed to give them. 

Fletcher took command. Proceeding to Philadelphia, 
he ousted the executive council and convened the assembly, 
to whom he proposed a scheme of taxation for purposes 
of defense. The assembly rather grudgingly complied, 
but only as an alternative to dispersion. No attempt was 
made to compel the Quakers to perform military duty. 
But a poll-tax was levied; all who volunteered for service 
in the militia were exempt from it; those who Avould not 
fight must pay. The total population of the colony, inclu- 
ding West Jersey, was about 12,000 in 1692. Of these about 
8,000 were Quakers, the rest Swedes, Holland Dutch, Pala- 
tine Germans, and a few Huguenots. These 4,000 were all 
fighting people, and four companies of efficient militia were 
enrolled from among them. Two small forts were built 
for defense of the channel, and after Count Frontenac 's 
massacre at Schenectady precautions were taken to prevent 

214 



UNDER WILLIAM OF ORANGE 

a surprise on the frontier. French influence, however, did 
not then reach far enough south to affect the Pennsylvania 
Indians; besides, the Iroquois in western New York were 
friendly to the English, and at that period the Iroquois 
practically ruled all the Indians east of the Ohio and as 
far south as Virginia. These conditions lasted until 1694, 
when King William restored the proprietary under a new 
patent, differing in some details from the original, but not 
affecting its substantial rights. 

It is sometimes amusing and sometimes exasperating to 
read the Quaker histories of this period. Their first and 
greatest effort is to make a monster of Colonel Fletcher. 
Fletcher undoubtedly had more energy than tact, more of 
the fortiter in re than of the suaviter in modo. A thor- 
ough soldier, of Puritan antecedents — his father having 
been a distinguished officer under Cromwell — he was likely 
to hew to the line. Yet, the impartial student of history — 
we mean documentary and official history — must admit 
that, all things considered, Fletcher's administration of 
Pennsylvania under what amounted to martial law was 
humane if not actually mild. That the duty was distaste- 
ful to him is sufficiently attested by his frequent requests 
to be relieved; and it was upon his recommendation, ac- 
companied by assurances that the colony could now defend 
itself, that the proprietary government was restored. Yet 
one of the Quaker historians (Gough) intimates that King 
William was misled in 1692 by Fletcher, who was ambitious 
to annex Pennsylvania and the Jerseys to New York, etc. 

The truth is, as already shown, that William himself 
took the initiative, that the duty was unwelcome to Fletcher, 

215 



WILLIAM PENN 

and that he escaped from it at the first opportunity. On 
King William's part it was never anything but a temporary 
expedient of military necessity. He even caused Penn to 
be advised by the Earl of Romney (Henry Sidney, Penn's 
personal friend) that he had no intention to permanently 
alter the status of the colony and would restore the 
former system as soon as the emergency should be past. It 
needs but a superficial knowledge of William's character to 
perceive that, if he had intended to abrogate the old charter, 
abolish the proprietary, and make Pennsylvania a crown 
colony, he would have gone about it in a way the signifi- 
cance of which would never have been left a matter of his- 
torical conjecture. 



216 



CHAPTER IX 

1684-1694 

PENNSYLVANIA IN PENN'S ABSENCE 



CHAPTER IX 

1684-1694 
PENNSYLVANIA IN PENN's ABSENCE 

Near the end of 1693, the charges of "treasonable corre- 
spondence" under which Penn had been detained in Eng- 
land and compelled to live in seclusion three years were 
declared to be without foundation. Released by order of 
the King, November 30, 1693, he was now free to visit 
Pennsylvania, but, as noted in the last chapter, his govern- 
ment there was still suspended and was not restored until 
the following August. Penn describes the circumstances of 
his release in a letter to Thomas Lloyd under date of ' ' 11th 
of 10th Mo. 1693," by the Quaker calendar, or December 
11, 1903, according to the Gregorian mode of reckoning 
time : 

This comes by the Pennsylvania Merchant, Har- 
rison, commander, and C. Saunders, merchant. By them 
and this know, that it hath pleased God to work my enlarge- 
ment, by three Lords representing my case as not only hard, 
but oppressive ; that there was nothing against me but what 
impostors, or those that are fled, or that have, since their 
pardon, refused to verify, (and asked me pardon for saying 
what they did) alleged against me; that they had long 
known me, some of them thirty years, and had never known 
me to do an ill thing, but many good offices; and that for 
not being thought to go abroad in defiance to the govern- 

219 



WILLIAM PENN 

ment, I might and would have done it two years ago; and 
that I was, therefore, willing to wait to go about my affairs, 
as before, with leave; that I might be the better respected 
in the liberty I took to follow it. 

King William answered, "That I was his old acquaint- 
ance, as well as theirs ; and that I might follow my business 
as freely as ever ; and that he had nothing to say to me, ' ' — 
upon which they pressed him to command one of them to 
declare the same to the Secretary of State, Sir John Tren- 
cliard, that if I came to him, or otherwise, he might signify 
the same to me, which he also did. The Lords were Roch- 
ester, Ranelagh, and Sidney; and the last as my greatest 
acquaintance, was to tell the Secretary ; accordingly he did ; 
and the Secretary, after speaking himself, and having it 
from King William's own mouth, appointed me a time to 
meet him at home ; and did with the Marquis of Winchester, 
and told me I was as free as ever; and as he doubted not 
my prudence about my quiet living, for he assured me I 
should not be molested or injured in any of my affairs, at 
least while he held that post. 

After his release, Penn was hopeful of immediate return 
to Pennsylvania. But now a new trouble beset him. This 
was the illness of his wife, which terminated fatally in Feb- 
ruary, 1694. Her death seems to have brought on a crisis 
in Penn 's pecuniary affairs. During several years past the 
revenues of the Worminghurst property had been the most 
important part of the family income. Pennsylvania had 
never been a source of revenue to Penn, but a continual 
drain. The settlers had not even paid the trifling quit- 
rent of one shilling a year per hundred acres. The Irish 
estates but little more than paid the fixed charges of their 
incumbrances. 

220 



IN PENN'S ABSENCE 

The Worrainghurst estate was Mrs. Peun's property in 
her own right. While she lived its income accrued to the 
family and Penn got the benefit of it. But now it was put 
in trust for her children — or rather for her eldest son, 
Springett Penn, then about nineteen years old. The other 
children were a boy named William, thirteen years old, 
and Lcetitia, a girl of fifteen. All that the father received 
from the estate after the mother's demise was an allowance 
for the support and education of the children. There may 
have been other causes operating to prevent his return at 
that time, but they are nowhere clearly set forth. 

We may now briefly survey the progress of affairs in 
Pennsylvania during the ten years 1684 to 1694. No at- 
tempt at detail is possible here or within our present limits. 
In any form it is not a pleasant history. The only gratify- 
ing feature of it was the rapid growth of the colony, which 
its natural advantages seem to have compelled, in spite of 
bad administration, discord in public affairs, and petty 
squabbles in private life. One fact had been conclusively 
demonstrated : the impracticability of popular self-govern- 
ment by Inward Light. It seemed as if almost every 
Quaker had a political economy of his own, and each one 
seemed intolerant of all others in direct ratio of his own 
ignorance, bigotry, or greed. 

The first two years of Penn's absence — 1684 to 1686 — 
were signalized by disputes between the assembly and the 
executive, the legislative branch arrogating to itself powers 
and privileges sufficient to forfeit the charter, had the 
home Government been disposed to be exact. King James 
and his advisers, doubtless on account of Penn 's own stand- 

221 



WILLIAM PENN 

ing at court, seemed willing to give the Quakers all the rope 
they wanted. But at the end of 1686 affairs had come to 
such a pass that, to prevent a lapse into utter anarchy, the 
Proprietary felt constrained to prorogue the assembly and 
annul all laws passed during his absence. His letter to the 
executive commission embodying this decree is as follows : 

First : You are to oblige the Provincial Council to their 
charter-attendance, or to take such a council as you think 
convenient to advise and assist you in the business of the 
public; for I will no more endure their most slothful and 
dishonorable attendance, but dissolve the frame without 
any more ado. Let them look to it, if further occasion be 
given. 

Secondly : That you keep to the dignity of your station, 
both in Council and out, but especially that you suffer no 
disorder in the Council, nor the Council and Assembly, nor 
either of them, to entrench upon the powers and privileges 
remaining yet in me. 

Thirdly: That you admit not any parleys or open con- 
ferences between the Provincial Council and Assembly ; but 
let one, with your approbation, propose, and let the other 
consent or dissent, according to the charter. 

Fourthly : That you curiously inspect the past proceed- 
ings of both, and let me know in what they have broken the 
bounds or obligations of the charter. 

Fifthly: That you, this very next Assembly General, 
declare my abrogation of all that has been done since my 
absence ; and so of all the laws but the fundamentals ; and 
that you immediately dismiss the Assembly and call it 
again; and pass such of them afresh, with such alterations 
as you and they shall see meet ; and this to avoid a greater 
inconveniency, which I foresee, and formerly communicated 
to Thomas Lloyd. 

222 



IN PENN'S ABSENCE 

Sixthly : Inspect the qualifications of members in Coun- 
cil and Assembly, and see they be according to charter; 
and especially of those that have the administration of just- 
ice; and whatever you do, let the point of the laws be 
turned against impiety, and your severe brow be upon all 
the troublesome and vexatious, more especially trifling ap- 
pealers. 

You shall shortly have a limitation from the King, 
though you have power, with the Council and Assembly, to 
fix the matter and manner of appeals, as much as to do any 
justice, or prevent any disorder in the province at all. 

Seventhly : That, till then, I have sent you a proclama- 
tion to that eft'ect, according to the powers of ordinance 
making, as declared in my letters patent, which you may 
expose as you please. 

This was nothing less than a sweeping declaration and 
drastic exercise of vice-regal prerogative, and it has been 
made a subject of severe animadversion by Gordon (His- 
tory of Pennsylvania) and other writers. But the docu- 
mentary evidence sustains Penn. What the government 
might have been had he been present to direct or guide it 
is a matter of conjecture. What it had actually become 
in only two years of his absence was a Quaker mob, in which 
factional spirit was embittered by sectarian or inter- 
sectarian reproaches, and political quarrels inextricably 
mixed up with religious cant. 

Penn had been fortunate in his selection of a deputy- 
governor and chairman of the executive commission, 
Thomas Lloyd. He was a learned man, deeply conscien- 
tious, upright, patient, and diligent. But he lacked the 
personal force of Penn, and the prestige of the Proprietary 

223 



WILLIAM PENN 

could not be delegated. Lloyd, chafed and worried by the 
distractions of his task — thankless at best — repeatedly 
besought relief, and Penn finally, in September, 1688, ap- 
pointed Captain John Blackwell to succeed him. This 
gentleman was not a Quaker, but a Presbyterian. He was 
the first non-Quaker official appointed in the colony — ex- 
cepting, of course, a few Swedish local officers in the ' ' lower 
counties" (now Delaware). Blackwell had held adminis- 
trative positions in Ireland and also in Scotland. In the 
Revolution his father had been keeper of Cromwell's mili- 
tary chest, and the young man himself was a soldier in the 
Army of the Commonwealth before reaching the age of 
twenty. When appointed deputy-governor of Pennsyl- 
vania he was about sixty years old, but still hale, vigorous, 
and energetic. In a letter to Robert Turner Penn gives 
his reasons for appointing Blackwell : 

The reason I appointed Capt. Blackwell was, that 
Friends refused, (especially Thomas Lloyd, to whom I of- 
fered it,) and Capt. Blackwell, here, is of high repute as 
a wise and virtuous man, and yet, though treasurer, in the 
Commonwealth's time, to the army in England, Scotland 
and Ireland, a place in Avhich he might have gained many 
thousands by the year, he was remarkably just, and refused 
all perquisites and a great place, in King Charles's and 
King James's time, in Ireland, because it depended upon 
them; besides, he was pregnant, experienced, and had for- 
merly commanded men. I thought I had a treasure in him, 
and being not a Friend, could better deal with those that 
were not and stop their mouths, and be stiff with our neigh- 
bors upon occasion. This was my motive to have him, and 
so thou mayst tell others. 

224 



IN PENN'S ABSENCE 

Blackwell was in Connecticut when the appointment 
reached him, which was December, nearly three months 
after its date. He assumed the governor's office at Phila- 
delphia in March, 1689. His official action from the start 
indicated a belief on his part that the government of Penn- 
sylvania was a practical institution. He was soon unde- 
ceived. Before he had been in contact with it six months 
he wrote to a friend in England — Sir Thomas Hartley: 
"I do not hesitate (and you may tell Mr. Penn so if 
you see him) to declare that the wild beasts that fill his 
forests here can better govern than the witless zealots who 
make a monkey-house of his assembly. Each is wiser than 
his neighbor, and on every side is heard the Pharisee-cry, ' I 
am holier than thou.' For the rest, consider hate of all 
sects but their own, envy and jealousy of one another 
within their own sect, such avarice as I have never seen or 
heard of elsewhere, each praying with his neighbor on 
First Days and then preying upon him the other six ! . . . 
I hope soon to be well out of it. Mr. Penn will receive my 
resignation by the next ship. ' ' * 

A Quaker historian (Janney) says: "He [Blackwell] 

* Most of the Quaker biographers say offhand tliat Blackwell was re- 
moved by Penn. Janney and Stoughton, with some regard for decency, 
say that Penn advised him to resign. Both versions are untrue and unjust. 
The statement that Penn removed him is a simple, downright falsehood. 
The intimation that he resigned by Penn's advice is, at best, a covert slur, 
designed by Janney and Stoughton to humor the vengeful spleen of the 
Quakers and at the same time avoid a barefaced lie. There is not a sen- 
tence or syllable extant in Penn's writings to show that he either removed 
Blackwell or advised liini to resign. Blackwell wrote Penn a letter dated 
August 29, 1689, forwarding reports on certain subjects and notifying him 
of the discontent on the lower counties. Penn replied to this November 
11, 1689. Not a word was said about resignation or removal in either let- 

16 225 



WILLIAM PENN 

appears to have been guilty of arbitrary and illegal pro- 
ceedings against the members of Council and the assembly, 
by whom they were firmly resisted." Careful examination 
of the records shows that the "arbitrary and illegal pro- 
ceedings" mentioned in this charming specimen of Quaker 
candor consisted of a close and faithful adherence to Penn 's 
own instructions, with a single exception. Penn had in- 
structed Governor Blackwell to "inquire into the ordi- 
nances for provincial trade with foreign countries as to 
their legality and whether they were admissible under the 
royal charter." Blackwell did this, and reported that the 
trade laws of the assembly in that respect were in direct 
conflict with the charter. This, however, he gave as his 
own legal opinion, and proposed to refer the question, with 
the text of the laws themselves, to the Proprietary for final 
decision. This was, of course, "arbitrary" in the last 
degree ! 

Penn had instructed him to "inquire into the matters 
in dispute between the province [Pennsylvania proper] 
and the 'lower counties' [now Delaware], and either act 
thereon according to his judgment or report all the facts 

ter. Penn's letter of November 11, 1689, reached Blackwell January 8, 
1690. But three weeks before that date^ or December 17, 1689, Blackwell 
had forwarded his resignation by the ship Bristol Merchant. Penn re- 
ceived it February 27, 1690. Governor Blackwell did not await the ap- 
pointment of a successor or even acceptance of his resignation. He him- 
self constituted Thomas Lloyd deputy ad interim and abruptly left the 
colony. Penn was, doubtless, glad to let him go, because the experi- 
ment of a non-Quaker Governor had proved a failure from the start. The 
Quakers would not tolerate a governor unless of their own sect, and they 
gave Penn no respite from their shrieks until Blackwell was gone. This 
ought to have satisfied them. But it seems that their descendants inherited 
their spleen, and still vent it in falsehoods over his grave. 

226 



IN PENN'S ABSENCE 

to him, should he be unwilling to act on his own responsi- 
bility. " Blackwell made the investigation, declined to act 
himself, and reported the facts to Penn. Grossly ' ' illegal, ' ' 
of course ! 

Penn had instructed Blackwell to "inquire as to the sale 
of liquor to the Indians, find out the guilty parties, and 
suitably punish them." Blackwell investigated, with the 
result of finding out that, while no Quaker had directly sold 
liquor to the Indians, several Quaker merchants — among 
whom were some members of the assembly itself — regularly 
supplied liquor to Dutch and Swedish traders, well know- 
ing that it was intended for sale and was actually sold to 
the Indians. This was, of course, "arbitrary" past en- 
durance ! What could be so tyrannical as an investigation 
that disclosed hypocrisy and greed on the part of holy 
men? But Blackwell did not venture to "suitably pun- 
ish the guilty parties." lie simply reported the facts 
to Penn. 

Now for the "single exception" mentioned above, in 
which Blackwell acted upon his own responsibility. In 
May, 1689, King William declared war against France. 
The news reached Pennsylvania early in August, accom- 
panied by the royal order requiring all colonial governors 
to take prompt and efficient measures for defense against 
aggression. Governor Blaclcwell summoned the assembly 
and recommended the enrolment of a provincial militia 
for defense, as was done in all other colonies. His recom- 
mendation "was received with derision and treated with 
contempt," to use his own language in the letter of resigna- 
tion he soon afterward sent to Penn. This was, indeed, 

227 



WILLIAM PENN 

"arbitrary." It was also "illegal," because forbidden by 
the special decalogue of George Fox. 

The assembly refused to consider the proposition. 
About three hundred able-bodied men, mostly Swedes, Ger- 
mans, Dutch, and the few non-Quaker English in the col- 
ony, offered their services, but the governor said he could 
not enroll them without authority and supplies from the 
assembly. The Quakers got rid of Blackwell in February, 
1690, and Thomas Lloyd was appointed in his place. They 
did not have long to wait. The sequence has already been 
related in the last chapter. The King seized the colony, 
placed it virtually under martial law, and, through Gov- 
ernor Fletcher, compelled the assembly — amid tears, groans, 
and invocations of Divine vengeance — to vote money for 
the defense of themselves, their families, and their prop- 
erty. It is an unpleasant task to record such history. No 
man with a spark of real, virile manhood in him can read 
it without contempt — or pity — for the fanatics who made it. 

Things went on from bad to worse. The "lower coun- 
ties," or "the territory," as it was officially called, seceded 
from Pennsylvania proper, officially known as "the prov- 
ince," and set up a government of their own. To prevent 
a complete separation, it was arranged that the lower coun- 
ties accept Captain Markham as deputy-governor, leaving 
Thomas Lloyd's authority limited to the "province," or 
Pennsylvania proper. At this time the population of the 
lower counties was about four thousand, and a movement 
for revocation of the charter and establishment of Dela- 
ware as a separate crown colony gained much headway. 
But Markham, by exercise of tact, succeeded in suppress- 

228 



IN PENN'S ABSENCE 

ing this movement just as Delaware was on the point of 
sending delegates to London with a petition for separate 
organization and government.* 

In addition to all this political turmoil, a formidable 
religious "sedition," as the Quaker writers term it, broke 
out in the colony. Its leader was George Keith, a Scotch 
Quaker. He was a man of thorough education and culture, 
and his first work in the colony was as principal of what 
is now known as the "Penn Charter School." Penn, when 
he founded that school, selected Keith to be its first teacher. 
He had been a Quaker of the Quakers, and was a member 
of the party who accompanied Penn in his continental tour 
of 1677. But now he revolted against the sect on several 
"points of doctrine" and set up an independent meeting- 
house of his own, where he preached a gospel mainly 
directed against the whims and inconsistencies of Fox. 

Keith was a powerful orator. The Orthodox or Foxite 
preachers then in the colony were mediocrities — or less — 
and the best of them was no match for George Keith. He 
was master of satire and ridicule, weapons to which the 
Orthodox Quaker dispensation of Church and state offered 
a broad and vulnerable target. Theaters — or "play- 

* About this time a good many of the Swedes in the lower counties 
sold their lands and left the colony. Some went to the other colonies — 
New York and Maryland— but most of them returned to Sweden. The 
Quakers, finding that the stubborn Lutherans resisted all their efforts at 
" convincement," resorted to petty annoyance and small persecution or 
proscription. In the first few years of union the Swedes had their share 
of public trust; but by 1695 all non-Quakers had been practically dis- 
qualified from share in the provincial government. It was estimated that 
at least 700 to 800 Swedes left the colony between 1685 and 1605. They 
were, in all respects of manhood, the most valuable of citizens and their 
loss could not be repaired. 

229 



WILLIAM PENN 

houses," in Quaker parlance — were, of course, interdicted 
in the colony. But George Keith soon made his independ- 
ent meeting-house the most popular place in town. At last 
his preaching became so grievous that the grand jury "pre- 
sented him" on charge of "reviling Samuel Jennings, and 
uttering and publicly declaring against the said Jennings 
sundry defamations, as witness": here followed a long 
array of "defamations." 

Jennings was a provincial magistrate or judge, in a 
court consisting of three. Keith was tried before the other 
two judges of Jennings's own court, by a jury of Orthodox 
Quakers. His guilt was therefore preordained. The sen- 
tence was a fine of five pounds sterling. The principal 
"defamation" upon which they convicted him was an as- 
sertion that, "if Jennings would hold his courts in the 
meeting-house on First Days and then preach in his court- 
hall on week-days, both the morals and the justice of the 
province might be bettered." 

Keith treated the whole proceeding with contempt. No 
effort was made to collect the fine. As a last resort he was 
expelled from the sect by the provincial meeting of minis- 
ters, and also by the ministers of West Jersey in general 
meeting at Burlington. This action was approved by the 
Grand Yearly Meeting in London.* 

* It must not be supposed that Keith preached a better doctrine than 
that of the Orthodox Quakers. On the contrary, he went back to the 
Simon-pure Antiuomianism of Saltmarsh, denounced all law and discipline 
in state or Church as heathen devices, ridiculed the officers of the law, 
and condemned every form of human restraint or justice. Among other 
things, he held that for a constable to arrest a malefactor by force was a 
sin against God equal to that of bearing arms in war. In fact, the modern 
reader of Keith's writings in the seventeenth century might easily imagine 

230 



IN PENN'S ABSENCE 

However, all this seed of righteousness seemed to fall 
on stony ground. Keith continued his preaching until, in 
the words of Janney, "it threatened to make a formidable 
schism in the society. ' ' But, just as hope seemed about to 
vanish, Providence intervened and averted the calamity. 
Keith suddenly felt a call to England, where he was soon 
after ordained an Episcopal clergyman — ' ' in reward for his 
treason to the Society of Friends and his defamation of 
its members, ' ' Gough says. It may be imagined that these 
dissensions, squabbles, and scandals, coming as they did in 
such rapid succession, added weight to the grievous burdens 
of injustice, financial embarrassment, and domestic bereave- 
ment already heaped upon William Penn. 

In May, 1696, Penn contracted his second marriage.* 
The bride was Hannah Callowhill, of Bristol, England. 
By this union Penn gained a sturdy helpmeet for his de- 
clining j^ears, and also, to a considerable extent, reenforced 
his waning fortune. Miss Callowhill was a somewhat ma- 
ture spinster, a broad-minded, hard-fibered, stalwart Eng- 
lishwoman, and, in the business sense at least, a Quakeress. 
She was the daughter of Thomas Callowhill, a Bristol mer- 
chant, who had amassed a snug fortune in the "West India 

that lie had before him the ravings of some Polish anarchist in the twen- 
tieth. His ability to jump from snch a platform to an Episcopal pulpit 
argues that he was an adventurer, without character or principle, faith or 
fidelity of any kind. But he was smart and, sometimes, amusing. 

* Curiously enough, one of Fenn's Quaker biographers (Lewis), in de- 
scribing this marriage, uses the phrase " led her to the altar." Lewis 
ought to have been expelled for that phrase. In Quaker estimation it was 
the rankest kind of paganism. lie should have said, in Orthodox Quaker 
form, " took her by the hand in presence of witnesses, signed the book, 
and then led her to the nuptial chamber." But " the altar," never! 

231 



WILLIAM PENN 

trade. This traffic consisted of importing sugar, molasses, 
and rum from the islands to Bristol and exporting English 
goods in return. Occasionally, when the market for Eng- 
lish goods happened to be slack, the voyage would take a 
triangular shape, the 'Hhird leg" being a cargo of human 
chattels from the "Gaboons" of West Africa to the isles 
of the Caribbean. The Callowhill family had been Qua- 
kerized by Hannah's mother, who was the daughter of 
Dennis Hollister, one of the first dozen or so "convinced" 
by Fox himself in 1643. 

All the force and vim of the family seemed to run 
in the female line. Abigail Hollister had always ruled 
Thomas Callowhill, and now her daughter Hannah was 
destined to dominate William Penn. It proved, however, 
a wholesome form of government. She at least succeeded 
in compelling Penn to bestow some attention upon his own 
business, to husband his resources somewhat, and to cut 
down his pension list of Quakers who had suffered for con- 
science sake. She also instituted a drastic system of ad- 
ministration .upon the Irish estate, by which it ultimately 
became productive of some revenue. In 1698 she sent 
Penn to Ireland for the purpose of completing some legal 
forms necessary to the change of administration. On his 
arrival at the Cove of Cork, from Bristol, he fell in with 
Story and another Quaker preacher, who induced him to 
attend the half-year meeting of Friends at Dublin. After 
that was over, the trio set forth on a missionary tour 
through the southeastern counties of Ireland. No doubt 
Story and the other preacher — Everrott by name — liked 
Penn's society. But another reason why they enjoyed his 

232 



IN PENN'S ABSENCE 

company was that they had not half a crown between them, 
while Penn's purse was plethoric. Just before leaving 
Dublin, Penn went to the horse-market and bought saddle- 
horses for the party — good Irish hunters, worth at least 
thirty guineas apiece. There was a law, or royal ordinance, 
in force in Ireland at that time prohibiting any Catholic 
from owning or using a horse worth over five pounds 
sterling. 

At this distance and in our time it is impossible to view 
such a law as anything but causeless despotism or gratuitous 
tyranny. Then, however, it was merely a measure of what 
King William considered "military necessity." His prin- 
cipal difficulty in quelling the insurrection of 1689- '91 had 
been due to the efficiency of the Irish light cavalry or 
mounted infantry in consequence of their superior horses. 
He determined that they should have no more light cavalry 
such as the Legion of Lord Clare or the Light Dragoons of 
Walsh and O'Donnel. He knew that horses worth only 
five pounds sterling could never be formidable as chargers ; 
so he fixed the limit of Catholic ownership in horseflesh at 
the valuation of five pounds (say $25) per steed. 

Now it also happened that the dress worn by Quakers 
at that time closely approximated the garb of Recollet 
friars. Both sects wore black* coats buttoned up to the 
chin, and hats with broad brims. Just as Penn and his 
party were crossing the boundary of the County Waterford 

* At tliat period the Quakers wore black mostly. The distinctive drab 
or " shadbelly " was a later invention, adopted, probably, for the purpose 
of readier recognition and to avoid the often unpleasant experience of 
being mistaken for Catholic friars in regions under the sway of King 
William. 

233 



WILLIAM PENN 

they were apprehended by a sergeant's guard or patrol of 
English dragoons, who made them dismount and seized 
their fine horses. In answer to Penn 's vigorous protest, the 
sergeant called his attention to the five-pound-sterling limit 
of value in papist horseflesh and declared that these fine 
Irish hunters they had were worth half a dozen times that 
price, at the same time explaining that he considered Penn 
and his companion friars of the Recollet or strict-observ- 
ance order, who were then viewed as the most dangerous 
and insidious emissaries and spies of Romanism to be found 
in Ireland. The upshot of this episode was that the ser- 
geant refused to believe even the documentary evidence of 
Quakerism that Penn showed him, and it was only by going 
eight miles out of his way to find the commanding officer 
of the patrol that Penn succeeded in recovering his horses. 
The officer then proposed to reduce the sergeant to the ranks 
and flog him for his stupidity ; whereupon Penn 's irrepres- 
sible goodness of heart asserted itself, and he begged the 
sergeant off with an eloquent plea that he did not know 
any better and was only doing his duty to the best of his 
understanding. 

The lesson of this episode is not far to seek. King Will- 
iam 's idea of "religious toleration" — in Ireland, at least — 
not only excluded Catholic men, but it also proscribed all 
horses of the Romish faith valued at $25 and upward! 
This was a policy that might be termed "thorough," if not 
strenuous. 

After this episode Penn and his companions spent a 
month or two in missionary work, and finally, in an inci- 
dental sort of way, he gave a day or two to the transaction 

234 



IN PENN'S ABSENCE 

of the business which had brought him to Ireland^ — that 
connected with his Shangarry estate — and then returned to 
Bristol, richer in religious growth but poorer in purse than 
when he went away. 

From this time Hannah Callowhill increased her influ- 
ence over William Penn. To her clear, firm, business-like 
mind he appeared to have passed the limit of self-control 
whenever or wherever religious excitement or sectarian zeal 
or the personal associations of his creed could get the better 
of his judgment. 



235 



CHAPTER X 

1G99-1701 

PENN, WITH LOGAN, RETURNS TO HIS 
PROVINCE 



CHAPTER X 

1699-1701 
PENN, WITH LOGxVN, RETURNS TO HIS PROVINCE 

In the meantime affairs in the colony had reached a 
stage of confusion bordering upon anarchy. Its wretched 
condition began to attract the unfavorable attention of the 
home Government. Lords Romney and Rochester, who 
were the only real friends Penn had in King William's 
Council, privately advised him of the danger and counseled 
him to go to Pennsylvania at once. They reminded him 
that the Peace of Ryswick (1697) had left King William 
free to look after the political concerns of the realm, and 
they assured him that the conditions prevailing in Pennsyl- 
vania were a subject of earnest consideration, the result of 
which might be permanently fatal to the Proprietary unless 
the causes of distrust were immediately removed. They 
told him that the King inexorably demanded three things, 
none of which then existed in Pennsylvania : 

First, a regular, stable form of government in which the 
rights of the people and the prerogatives of the executive 
should be clearly defined, scrupulously observed, and wisely 
carried into effect. 

Second, an adequate enforcement of law by judicial 
power, supplemented when necessary by physical force. 

239 



WILLIAM PENN 

Third, and most important in the imperial sense, a regu- 
lar and reliable provision for defense. 

This last, they assured Penn, was a sine qua non with 
the King. He was disgusted with the conduct of the Qua- 
kers toward Fletcher, his personal representative, and had 
more than once declared that he would take advantage of 
the present peace to establish in Pennsylvania a regime 
which the outbreak of another war would not find unpre- 
pared. To this Penn pleaded the "religious scruples" of 
the Quakers. They answered him that the King believed 
self-defense to be the first great law, a law that could not 
be superseded by so-called ' ' religious scruples. ' ' They said 
the King would not try to compel Quakers to go into the 
field and fight, but he would make them pay the costs of 
defense; if by their own appropriation, well and good; if 
not, he would find other means. They also reminded Penn 
that the charter itself reserved the right of taxation by 
Act of Parliament, and, if the colonial assembly would not 
levy and collect a tax for defense. Parliament would levy 
it and English soldiers would collect it. Penn desired 
audience with the King, but it was refused. William said : 
"I have nothing to say to Mr. Penn just now. But I shall 
be most happy to receive him and congratulate him when 
he shall have set his house in order. ' ' 

This state of things practically left Penn no choice. He 
either had to go to Pennsylvania and straighten out the 
tangled web there, or King William would put a permanent 
end to the whole farce — for farce it had become, and noth- 
ing else. 

On September 9, 1699, Penn embarked in the ship Can- 
240 



PENN, WITH LOGAN, RETURNS 

terbuiy, at Southampton, and arrived at Chester on Decem- 
ber 1st, after a rough voyage of nearly three months. His 
wife and his daughter Lffititia accompanied him. He also 
brought with him, in the capacity of secretary, a young 
man named James Logan, destined in after years to become 
the ablest and most useful Quaker ever connected with the 
Proprietary government. 

There was room for new blood and new fiber. Thomas 
Lloyd had passed away in 169-1, at the early age of forty- 
five, worn out and disheartened by brave efforts to accom- 
plish the impossible. William Markham was still alive and 
deputy-governor; but he was nearing threescore and ten, 
and was also worn out by nearly twenty years of unavailing 
effort to govern the ungovernable. He hailed Penn's ar- 
rival as a prisoner in a dungeon might hail the tidings of 
release ! Ever since the restoration of the Proprietary, in 
1694, Markham had been striving to do exactly those things 
which, as recorded on a previous page, the King insisted 
must be done. He had failed in most directions; but he 
had managed to reunite the upper and lower counties on a 
more equitable basis of representation, and, to some extent, 
had mitigated the Quaker monopoly of offices, emoluments, 
and trade benefits. As for defense, he had enrolled a mi- 
litia, though with no provision for their pay or supply 
when in service, and he had succeeded in partially arming 
them, through the generosity of New York, Maryland, and 
Virginia. He had also to a considerable extent overcome 
the antagonism of the Quakers themselves to defensive 
measures, and there was a respectable element in the assem- 
bly ready to vote supplies when needed. To his great de- 
17 241 



WILLIAM PENN 

light, Markham found that James Logan — whom he knew 
Penn had brought over for important uses — agreed with 
him on this point, and that Penn himself, while not quite 
daring to disobey the commandment of George Pox, was 
willing to let the question of defense be settled affirmatively, 
provided some one else would shoulder the sin of it. Even 
William Penn had learned some lessons during ten years 
in the grim school of William of Orange. 

Having no house of his own in Philadelphia, Penn in- 
stalled his domestic establishment in one rented for the oc- 
casion. It was known as "the slate-roof house," stood on 
the east side of Second Street, between Chestnut and Wal- 
nut, and was one of the most commodious dwellings then in 
the town.* Here he resided until early in the spring of 
1700, when the family occupied the mansion at Pennsbury 
Manor. In the ' ' slate-roof house, ' ' February 28, 1700, was 
born a son, named John Penn, the only one of Penn's chil- 
dren native to this country, and known in his day and 
generation as "the American." 

During the winter of 1699-1700 but little of importance 
was done. At the instance of the Proprietary, two acts 
were passed by the assembly, one providing for defense 
against piracy, and the other to break up the contraband 
trade. These acts had long been demanded by Colonel 
Quarry, King's judge of admiralty for the province, but 
until Penn's arrival without success. In consequence of 
this neglect. Quarry, who was the only direct representative 
of the King's authority in the province, had made strong 

♦ This house stood in its original shape until about 1849, when it waa 
torn down to make room for a business structure. 

242 



PENN, WITH LOGAN, RETURNS 

representations to the home authorities concerning the 
weak and frivolous character of the provincial government, 
and these statements were the principal cause of King Will- 
iam 's dissatisfaction, already referred to. 

Penn's personal influence, however, proved sufficient to 
procure the passage of these bills, which, for the time being, 
satisfied the King's representative. The assembly, however, 
proved to be completely under the influence of David Lloyd, 
the leading Quaker lawyer of the colony, and Penn, by 
virtue of the power reserved to him in the charter, dissolved 
it. A new council and assembly were chosen, and convened 
April 1, 1700. 

This election disclosed the fact that David Lloyd had 
thoroughly established himself as the political boss of the 
majority in the province, and he waged a stout battle 
against the influence of Penn himself. But the personal 
prestige of the Proprietary, reenforced by threats of the 
royal displeasure, turned the scale. Lloyd was elected by 
his own constituency, but the majority he had hitherto con- 
trolled in the assembly was wiped out. His behavior dur- 
ing the political campaign, and particularly his defiance of 
King and Proprietary alike, had roused the resentment of 
the usually placid Penn. Not satisfied with defeating 
Lloyd's bossship in the assembly, Penn now determined to 
oust him from the Council. 

He was accordingly impeached upon charges preferred 
by Colonel Quarry. The Council, however, voted only to 
suspend him until he could have a judicial trial — which 
never occurred. Lloyd claimed that the vote for suspen- 
sion was a trick on the part of Penn to remove him from 

243 



WILLIAM PENN 

the Council and that there never was any intention of 
bringing him to trial. This was borne out by appearances. 
But Penn's supporters explained that the failure to try 
him was due to the conduct of his chief accuser, Colonel 
Quarry, who, after vexatious postponements from time to 
time, went to England and dropped the whole affair. 

Review of the meager evidence extant indicates that the 
trouble grew out of a personal quarrel between the King's 
judge and Lloyd, and that Penn threw his power into the 
judge's side of the scale, for reasons equally personal. It 
had the effect of suppressing Lloyd's bossism while Penn 
remained in the colony. But after the latter returned to 
England Lloyd resumed his activity and became, if possi- 
ble, more grievous than ever. He was a man of much 
ability, both as politician and lawyer. The history of the 
subsequent contests between him and James Logan — Penn's 
political representative — would, ynutatis mutandis, read 
very much like that of more recent trials of strength be- 
tween Senator Quay and John Wanamaker. In the long 
run Logan had the best of these contests, mainly be- 
cause he was backed by the power of the Proprietary 
and influence of the Crown. But Lloyd, at least, kept him 
busy. 

As previously observed, Penn went to live in the man- 
sion at Pennsbury early in the spring of 1700 — some of the 
documents say in April, some in May. The house itself 
vv^as built between 1681 and 1684. Its material was brick, 
mainly imported from England, though some of the brick 
used for the inside walls was made here. It fronted the 
Delaware River some distance (about one hundred rods) 

244 



PENN, WITH LOGAN, RETURNS 

from the water's edge. The slope upward from the river- 
bank at that point is very gentle, the lower floor of the 
house having been no more than twenty feet above mean 
high tide. 

The mansion itself was the most imposing structure of 
its time to be found anywhere between the Hudson and the 
Potomac, and but few in New York or Virginia surpassed 
it in size or elegance of furnishing. It had a front of sixty 
feet, with a depth of forty-two. The main walls were 
eighteen inches thick. It had two stories, and a high attic 
or garret used for servants' rooms. The lower floor had 
a hall eighteen feet wide extending two-thirds of the way 
back, and in rear of this was a small hall, used also as a 
reception-room. On either side of the great hall were two 
rooms, each about nineteen feet square. The two rooms on 
the north side were used as parlor and drawing-room ; those 
on the south side as library and dining-room, respectively. 

In the rear was a separate building about twenty by 
twenty-four feet, one story high, with an attic, and con- 
nected with the mansion by a covered way some fourteen 
feet long. This was the kitchen. Back of this again was 
a building of about equal dimensions known as "the brew- 
house," which was fitted with a complete apparatus for 
brewing ale or "strong beer." At each end of the main 
building was a structure about twenty -two feet square, a 
story and a half high. These were about twenty feet from 
the main building, and detached from it. One was used 
by Penn as his executive office, for public affairs, the other 
as the "steward's office," for the private concerns of the 
personal estate. 

245 



WILLIAM PENN 

Besides these structures there were stables for twelve 
horses, sheds for cattle, and a barge-house at the mouth 
of the tidal creek that flowed on the north side of the 
grounds. An inventory of the furniture in 1701 indicates 
an advanced degree of elegance, considering the time and 
place. Though somewhat mutilated and defaced in the 
original, Watson was able about seventy years ago to 
make out the following, for publication in his interesting 
Annals : 

Lower Rooms: Best parlor, two tables, one couch, two 
great cane chairs and four small ones ; seven cushions, four 
satin, three green plush and sundries more. Back parlor, 
two tables, six easy chairs, one great leather chair, a large 
clock, a pair of brasses (for the fireplace) and many small 
articles. Little Hall, six leather chairs and five maps. 
Great Hall, one long table and two forms, six chairs, pew- 
ter mugs, five mazarins, two cisterns (bronze urns with 
spigots) and sundry other furnishings. Dining room, 
plate, linen, damask, five sideboard cloths, with tankards, 
basins, plates, porringers, knives, forks, spoons and many 
small articles. 

Second Floor: Five bedchambers each furnished with 
bed, bedding, chairs, table, clothes-press, silk and flannel 
blankets, linen, white bed-curtains, damask curtains for 
windows, etc. ; and nursery, with pallet bed, two chairs for 
Master John, toys and sundry other small articles. The list 
of plate includes eighty-seven pieces, all sterling silver; 
of which three are " large chafing-dishes wuth things to 
burn spirits " and one " large double chafing-dish with 
gridiron." 

The steward's accounts (1701) show six horses; four for 
carriage and two for saddle; harness single, double and 
four-in-hand; one large coach, two small "leathern con- 

246 



PENN, WITH LOGAN, RETURNS 

veniencos" of two wheels, and a sedan chair and side-saddle, 
besides two men's saddles and two pillions. 

The cost of the mansion, with the furniture, is said to 
have been £7,800 — a sum in those days easily equivalent in 
purchasing power, to $100,000 now. Though the land was 
bought in 1681 and the mansion finished in 1684, it appears 
from the papers of James Logan that as late as 1700 but 
ten acres had been cleared for cultivation. This is some- 
what obscure. It jjrobably means the area then under the 
plow, because the reports of James Harrison during his 
stewardship indicate that land was systematically cleared 
every year. The original purchase by Deputy-Governor 
Markham in 1681 was between 6,000 and 7,000 acres. But 
for some reason not explained the actual deed calls for only 
3,800. 

In this palace of its period Governor and Mrs. Penn 
kept open house and dispensed a stately hospitality to all 
comers, rich or poor, high or low, white or red, alike, from 
April, 1700, to October, 1701. It appears from fragments 
of correspondence extant that Miss Leetitia was not well 
pleased with the rural seclusion of the manor, and spent 
most of her time with friends in town, mainly the Shippens, 
Logans, and Markhams. She was now past twenty, buxom, 
handsome, and not so demure as Quaker maidens of that 
epoch are popularly supposed to have been. Her coquetries 
were evidently intended to be perfectly impartial. But 
one of her swains, an evidently calf-built youth, named 
William IMasters, claimed that she had promised to marry 
him, followed her to England, and, when she did marry 

247 



WILLIAM PENN 

William Aubrey, raised a vigorous protest, which, though 
it did not prevent the marriage, brought about a cruel 
estrangement between the Penns and the Penningtons.* 

During the two years of his second and final residence 
in Pennsylvania William Penn tried to do several things 
wise in themselves and calculated to improve the conduct 
of public affairs. The details of these efforts would be 
not only too prolix for our space, but too melancholy for 
good reading. He accomplished nothing except to further 
demonstrate — had further demonstration been needed — 
the futility of trying to adapt the doctrines of John Salt- 
marsh to the problems of popular self-government. He 
found that, no matter how beautiful his theories of universal 
toleration and unrestricted suffrage, he practically had to 
deal with an Established Church in fact, if not in name; 
and this misfortune was aggravated by the circumstance 
that, while the Established Episcopacy in England was 
an institution of law and could be held to some sort of tem- 
poral responsibility, the Established Quakerism of Penn- 
sylvania was in the air, spiritual, elusive to the sight, im- 
palpable to the touch, and irresponsible to itself or anybody 
else; but still an establishment, capable of thwarting 
everything, though incapable of creating anything. He 
must have realized in some degree the trials that had pre- 
cipitated Thomas Lloyd into an early grave, and brought 
even the robust and sanguine William Markham to a dis- 

* It is remarkable that no modern purveyor of fiction has seized upon 
this episode in Quaker high life as the theme of an " historical novel." Of 
course we do not refer to the innumerable throng of those who write 
shirt waist romances or the melodrama of the board-walk, but some real, 
stalwart, and strenuous artist. 

248 



PENN, WITH LOGAN, RETURNS 

heartened and desolate old age. Penn's last effort to get 
some kind of sensible legislation through what Governor 
Blackwell, in his sturdy Puritan wrath, had called that 
"monkey-house of an assembly," was the most dismal and 
humiliating failure of all. 

At the beginning of 1701 King William accused Louis 
XIV of not only violating the Treaty of Ryswick, but also 
of wantonly disregarding a subsequent compact concerning 
the Spanish Succession. "Louis," he said, sardonically, 
"so dearly loves treachery that he will not even keep a 
promise for his own benefit! He must be humbled again, 
and this time for good." 

William now formed a great coalition of England, Hol- 
land, the North German States, and Austria against France 
and Spain. Among his precautionary measures before de- 
claring war was to write autograph letters to the colonial 
governors warning them to be in readiness for self-defense 
by land and promising to look out for their protection by 
sea himself. One of these letters was, of course, sent to 
William Penn. He laid it before the assembly and re- 
quested action in accordance with the requirements of the 
King and home Government. The result is stated by con- 
temporaneous history, from a Quaker source : 

But finally, after some days spent in this manner, they 
sent their answer in writing, declining to comply with the 
King's requisition, assigning as a reason the taxes already 
levied and the quit-rents due. They stated, moreover, "that 
the adjacent colonies had done nothing in the matter, and 
therefore they postponed it to another session ; desiring that 
the Proprietary would represent their condition to the 

249 



WILLIAM PENN 

King, and assure him of their readiness to comply with his 
commands " as far as their religious persuasions ivould 
permit. ' ' The members for the territories made a separate 
answer, alleging that the lower counties, though most ex- 
posed, were in a defenseless condition, being without arms 
or ammunition, and having neither militia nor officers ap- 
pointed to command them. They prayed, therefore, to be 
excused from "contributing to forts abroad while they were 
unable to build any for their own defense at home. ' ' This 
answer shows that the members from the territories were 
less imbued with the principles of Friends, in relation to 
war, than those of the province, and doubtless this was one 
cause of their frequent disagreements, for the pacific policy 
of Penn could only be carried into practise by persons thor- 
oughly convinced of its feasibility. 

The Governor having received the Assembly 's answer to 
the King's letter, dismissed it; but little more than two 
weeks elapsed before he received information from Eng- 
land which made it necessary to issue writs for the im- 
mediate election of another.* 

Throughout this discussion Penn refused to take any 
responsibility upon himself. Though repeatedly requested 
by the assembly to lay his own views before them in wri- 
ting, he insisted that the King's letter was sufficient, and 
declined to express views of his own on the subject of 
armament or defense. This was, of course, evasion or 
"dodging," pure and simple. He did not dare to openly 
oppose the King. He shrank also from violating George 
Fox's fourth commandment. In this dilemma Penn 
adopted the ostrich policy. He may have saved his face 
with the Quakers by this feat, but he did not fool the King. 
* Logan MSS. as summarized by Janney. 

250 



PENN, WITH LOGAN, II E T U R N S 

It was this that caused the King, as soon as he heard of 
Penn's evasive behavior, to begin operations in Parliament 
for permanent transfer of Pennsylvania to the Crown. 
The fact was, though not known in the colony at the time, 
that Penn failed to keep a personal promise he had made 
as a condition on which the Proprietary was restored to 
him in 1694. The archives of the State Paper Office, 
Board of Trade Division, contain the following minute in 
Council : 

At the Committee of Trade and Plantations, Council 
Chamber at "Whitehall, the 1st and 3d of August, 1694 : 
Present a Quorum of the Committee. Mr. Secretary Blath- 
wayte offers the Memorial of William Penn, praying to be 
heard in his own person. Granted : 

The Committee being attended by Mr. Penn, who de- 
clared to their Lordships that if Her Majesty * shall be 
graciously pleased to restore him to the Proprietary accord- 
ing to the grants [of Charles II and the Duke of York, 
afterward James II] he intends with all convenient speed 
to repair thither and take care of the Government and pro- 
vide for the safety and security thereof, all that in him lies. 
And to that end he will carefully transmit to the Council 
and Assembly there all such orders as shall be given by Her 
Majesty in that behalf, and he doubts not but that they 
will at all times dutifully comply with and yield obedience 
thereunto and to all such orders and directions as their 

* The Queen was then in charge of the home Government, King 
William being absent commanding the army in Flanders. However, in 
this instance Queen Mary was only carrying out conditions the King him- 
self had prescribed three months before, on the eve of his departure from 
London. These conditions were that Pennsylvania must fall in line with 
her sister colonies in the system of defense, or he would place a permanent 
government there that would make lier do it. 

251 



WILLIAM PENN 

Majesties shall from time to time think fit to send for the 
supplying of such quota of men or the defraying of their 
part of such charges as their Majesties shall think necessary 
for the safety and preservation of their Majesties' domin- 
ions in North America. 

Fortunately for Penn, the existence of this document 
was not known to the assembly in 1701, when he was spar- 
ring with them over the King's letter and exhausting his 
arts of diplomacy to shift responsibility from his own shoul- 
ders to theirs. In this transaction Penn appears more dis- 
creditably than in any other of his career. It serves to ex- 
hibit the grip that Fox had fastened upon him, an influence 
capable of making him tread so closely upon the verge of 
dissimulation as almost to obliterate the line between that 
and dishonesty. 

In the debate of the assembly one devout old Quaker 
named Claypole declared that ' ' rather than vote a farthing 
for the wicked uses of war," he "would see the province 
ravaged by French pirates from the ocean or massacred by 
French Indians from Canada. It would be only persecu- 
tion for righteousness ' sake, and Friends knew how to suffer 
that." When it is borne in mind that this sentiment, 
though not often so vigorously expressed, dominated the 
counsels of the assembly, the folly of trying to address 
sense or reason to them must be self-evident. 

Penn succeeded better with the Indians. Whenever he 
could get a council of them together he was sure of having 
a deliberative body to deal with. Their mental processes 
were never "mysticized" by Inward Light. Under dates 
of September 13, 1700, and April 23, 1701, he held councils 

252 



PENN, WITH LOGAN, RETURNS 

with the Susquehanna and Conestoga Indians, respectively, 
and made treaties ratifying the purchase of lands in the 
Susquehanna Valley which had been initiated for him by 
Governor Dongan of New York in 1686. The latter had 
satisfied the claims of the Iroquois to those lands, based 
on conquest; but the "Susquehannocks" and Conestogas 
denied the right of the Iroquois to convey the title. Penn, 
in his turn, satisfied the two tribes first mentioned and 
received from them a deed. 

The area was indefinite, being bounded on the north by 
the southern limits of New York and on the south by the 
northern line of Maryland ; but neither of those boundaries 
was known in 1701. The Maryland line was, as already 
stated, established by Mason and Dixon in 1768, and the 
New York line by the Fort Stanwix treaty of Sir William 
Johnson the same year. The western boundary of the Sus- 
quehanna tract was not described at all, except by the 
words "as far to the westward as Maryland extends"; an 
expression also wholly indefinite in 1701. 

This territory was at once thrown open to settlement. 
In 1702 a tide of German, Swiss, Huguenot, and Scotch- 
Irish immigration to the region set in, and by 1727 more 
than fifty thousand people were settled in the present 
counties of Berks, Lancaster, Lebanon, and York. They 
were all Lutherans or Calvinists, with a few Swiss Mennon- 
ites, and they and their descendants were the real makers 
of the Commonwealth. They made the state, while the Qua- 
kers were making the money. They pioneered the wilder- 
ness, subdued the forests, and held the Indians in check 
on the frontier, while the Quakers mostly huddled in Phila- 

253 



AVILLIAM PENN 

delphia and the smaller towns, devoting themselves to 
worship and to trade. 

A singular coincidence was that on the same day — 
August 16, 1701 — the Pennsylvania assembly refused to 
grant the supplies asked by King William, and the Earl of 
Ranelagh, Government leader in the House of Lords, in- 
troduced a "Bill for the Better Regulation and Government 
of Certain Provinces and Plantations." The bill was read 
twice and referred to committee with request that report 
be made after the recess. It provided, among other things, 
for annexation of West Jersey and East Jersey to New 
York, for revocation of Penn's charter with suitable in- 
demnity for personal loss or damage, and the incorporation 
of Pennsylvania as a representative Crown colony on the 
plan and system then existing in New York. This kind of 
news always travels fast. It reached Penn in fifty-two 
days, in a letter from his friend, William Popple, secretary 
of the Committee on Trade and Plantations. He decided 
to sail for England at once. An intimation that such a 
measure was contemplated had reached him about the end 
of August, but he did not then think it would be brought 
on until the next session. 

His first intention was to be absent only long enough 
to effect a better understanding with the King and ministry 
on almost any terms that would save his Proprietary ; then 
he would return to Pennsylvania and take measures, no 
matter how drastic, to bring about a practical and responsi- 
ble mode of provincial government. Though he had been 
in the colony less than two years, he issued in August writs 

254 



PENN, WITH LOGAN, RETURNS 

of election for the third assembly since his arrival. This 
alone was argument enough for a sweeping change, and he 
was ready to adopt any measure that the King and ministry 
might approve — even to a restriction of legislative powers. 
He believed he could accomplish all he desired in a year 
at most. Part of his program was that his wife and daugh- 
ter should remain at Pennsbury during his absence. In 
this, however, he counted without his host. Under date of 
September 8, 1701, he writes from Pennsbury to James 
Logan at Philadelphia: 

"I can not prevail on my wife to stay: still less Tishe. 
I know not what to do. Samuel Carpenter seems to excuse 
her in it." In another letter he says: "The going of my 
wife and Tishe will add greatly to the expense; more of 
living in London than of the passage. But they will not 
be denied." 

It is not difficult to understand the disinclination of the 
two women to stay in the colony while the husband and 
father went to England for a sojourn the duration of 
which they knew was beyond his control. Lsetitia, a young 
lady past twenty, fond of society, far too gay and sportive 
for the typical Quaker maiden accustomed to society of 
gentlefolk in England, could find poor substitute in the 
rustic circles of the new colony, where most of the people 
were poor and all struggling. She had already shown 
abundant signs of distaste for the strait laces and ex- 
cessive devoutness, whether real or simulated, of the pro- 
vincial Quakers. Not long after her return to England 
she renounced all connection with the Society of Friends, 

255 



WILLIAM PENN 

and was received into the Church of England. Though, as 
we have observed, gay and fond of pleasure, Laetitia Penn 
was of irreproachable character and far above the average 
of her sex in mental endowments.* 

Mrs. Penn's determination to accompany her husband 
had a different reason, and one far more practical. Since 
Penn's campaign in Ireland (1698) his wife had seen, as 
she could not help seeing, that he needed the guidance of 
her firm will and strong, clear mind, and this much more 
in England than in America, In the new country the field 
for missionary or itinerant work was limited by the small 
population, and also by the fact that in Penn's time most 
of the people were already "convinced." But in Europe 
the field was illimitable. And Mrs. Penn knew that, no mat- 
ter what the urgency of his business might be, he was at 
any moment likely to be diverted from it and persuaded to 
make a missionary tour whenever two or three itinerant 
and impecunious Quaker preachers, like Story and Ever- 
rott, could get hold of him. Realizing this, and knowing 
also that his whole fortune, with the work and sacrifices of 

* No authentic portrait of Ltetitia Penn is extant. She is described by 
a contemporary chronicler (Thomas Story) as " courteously carriaged and 
sweetly tempered in her conversation among us and also a diligent comer 
to meetings." She is also described as a large, handsome girl, closely resem- 
bling in countenance and complexion her father at her own age (twenty- 
two). From this description, and from her father's portrait painted when he 
was in Ireland with the Duke of Ormond, it may readily be understood that 
with his features softened into feminine contour and expression slie must 
have been a young woman of rare beauty. Her marriage to William Au- 
brey proved a misfortune. Aubrey was avaricious, exacting, suspicious, 
jealous, and tyrannical : a harsh creditor in dealing with her father and an 
oppressive husband to her. 

256 



PENN, WITH LOGAN, HE TURNS 

twenty years, himg upon the success of his present mission 
to Loudon, she most naturally and sensibly decided to see 
that he attended strictly to the momentous temporal busi- 
ness, even at the expense of spiritual privation. 

When all other preparations were complete, Penn ap- 
pointed Andrew Hamilton deputy-governor, James Logan 
secretary of the province, and an executive council of ten 
— eight of whom were Quakers — and who, in case of death 
or resignation of the governor, were empowered to act in 
his stead until a new appointment could be made. He then 
embarked witli his wife, daughter, and American-born in- 
fant son, and sailed from Philadelphia November 4, 1701. 
The ship was the Dalmahoy, strangely enough owned by 
and named for Colonel Dalmahoy, who had beaten Algernon 
Sidney in the parliamentary contest for Guilford in 1678, 
when Penn so ardently championed Sidney's cause. She 
cleared the Capes November 8th, having been detained two 
days at Newcastle. The voyage was marvelously quick for 
those days, the ship arriving at Portsmouth December 14th, 
only thirty-six days from the Capes, the "record run" of 
that era, so fas as can be ascertained. Penn went direct 
from Portsmouth to London, and, taking apartments in 
Kensington, proceeded energetically with his affairs. 

About two months afterward the bill that had been in- 
troduced in the House of Lords was withdrawn by Lord 
Ranelagh. This, presumably, was due to Penn's influence 
with certain members of the ministry. Lords Rochester and 
Romney in particular. There was, however, a powerful 
party in Parliament, largely Whigs, who believed that all 
i« 257 



AV I L L I A M P E N N 

proprietary governments ought to be abolished and the 
direct authority of the Crown made uniform. This caused 
William Penn and Lord Baltimore to cease their disputes 
and join hands, one striving to hold his own in Pennsyl- 
vania, the other seeking restoration of the Maryland Pro- 
prietary, which had been taken aM'ay by the "Protestant 
Revolution" in that province in 1688- '89. Hardly had 
Lord Ranelagh's bill been withdrawn from the House of 
Lords when a similar one was offered in the Commons. 
This was believed to have behind it the personal influence 
of the King, who always operated through that body in 
preference to the upper house. The Bill of the Commons 
was introduced early in March, 1702. 

A few days afterward King William died suddenly from 
injuries inflicted by the stumbling and falling of his horse. 
His successor, Queen Anne, proved more indulgent toward 
Penn than William had been. There can be no doubt that 
the death of the King saved the Proprietary to Penn. 
Colonel Quarry had "completely poisoned his [the King's] 
mind toward Pennsylvania," as the Quaker writers unani- 
mously put the phrase, and William had fully resolved to 
have a government there that could be relied upon, a gov- 
ernment that would not — as the Pennsylvania assembly 
had done the previous year — reject his royal requests or 
defy the Proprietary along with him. Long afterward Dr. 
Franklin expressed the opinion that, whatever it might have 
been to Europe, the death of King William just at that 
moment was a misfortune to Pennsylvania, because it post- 
poned for many years the establishment of a governing 
system suited to sensible and practical men. At any rate, 

258 



PENN, WITH LOGAN, RETURNS 

all immediate prospect of a radical change disappeared 
with the change of sovereigns.* 

At the outset of her reign Queen Anne proclaimed that 
she would maintain toleration. The Society of Friends, at 
their yearly meeting in London, voted an address which 
William Penn was, of course, selected to submit, as the head 
of the sect. The text of this address seems to have been 
lost. It is described as brief and expressive of perfect 
fealty to the sovereign, with profound gratitude for the 
pledge of toleration. Her response, when Penn had read 
the address to her, was : 

Mr. Penn, I am so well pleased that what I have said is 
to your satisfaction, that you and your friends may be 
assured of my protection, and I sincerely hope for your 
welfare and happiness. f 

Anne proved the steadfast friend of Penn. She had 
seen him at court during the reign of her father, James II, 
knew his fondness for Penn's father, the admiral, and his 
kindly feeling toward Penn himself. Though Anne had 
taken sides against her father in the Revolution of 1688 and 
was estranged from him politically, she still respected his 
personal friendships and never missed an opportunity of 
graciousncss toward his old friends. It was asserted by 

* King William was not hostile to the Quakers as such ; hut he was 
unalterably opposed to their non-combatant doctrine, and held that any 
body of men who preached against self-defense were a dangerous element 
in any state and unworthy to have any share in its government. But in 
the purely spiritual sense he was tolerant enougli. The very last official 
act of his life was to approve a bill exempting Quakers from judicial oath, 
and providing that their solemn affirmation be accepted instead. 

f Oldmixon's Life of Queen Anne. 

259 



WILLIAM P E N N 

people hostile to Penn that the favor he found with Qiieeu 
Anne was due to the influence of the Duchess of Marlbor- 
ough, and that the good offices of the latter in this respect, 
as in most others, were well paid for; also that the indi- 
vidual who found a way to the favor of the duchess was 
not Penn, but his wife. 

There is not a particle of evidence to prove or even give 
color to this statement beyond the fact that Mrs. Penn was 
personally acquainted with the duchess, and sometimes vis- 
ited her on occasions of ceremony. The more probable 
theory is that Anne hoped to effect the termination of the 
Proprietary by purchase on behalf of the Crown, instead 
of compelling its surrender through drastic legislation, as 
intended by her predecessor. Color is lent to this theory 
by the fact that during the first year of Queen Anne 's reign 
negotiations were suggested by her advisers to Penn having 
purchase in view. And it is also true that these negotia- 
tions were from time to time renewed between 1703 and 
1714, when the Queen died. During her whole reign, 
though it was a period of constant war both in Europe and 
America, she never allowed the slightest interference with 
Penn or his colony. And it is equally true that her favor 
to him and his was quite as marked after the Duchess of 
IMarlborough ceased to be influential at her court as it was 
in the height of the duchess's power. For these reasons, 
it would seem safe to assume that Penn dealt directly with 
the Queen and needed no intervention. No subject was 
more often received or more pleasantly treated at the court 
of Queen Anne than was William Penn. 



260 



CHAPTER XI 

1702-1715 

GOVERNMENT BY CORRESPONDENCE 



CHAPTER XI 

1702-1715 
GOVERNMENT BY CORRESPONDENCE 

From 1702 until the end, the life of William Penn makes 
a sad history. His colony grew rapidly, but he realized 
no benefit from it. On the contrary, his financial embar- 
rassments increased almost as fast as the colony grew. Re- 
maining in England, he tried to govern Pennsylvania by 
deputies and to shape its policy by correspondence. In 
both he failed. His lieutenants were in some cases strong 
men — as, for example, James Logan, the ablest of them all. 
But he had in David Lloyd an adversary on the spot, tire- 
less, relentless, and without scruple. Lloyd's system of 
political or party management was simple. He was against 
"William Penn, first, last, and all the time. 

Hardly had Penn left the province when Lloyd elected 
himself speaker of the assembly, and he held that post in 
spite of every effort to dislodge him. Lloyd, in a negative 
sense, could rule the province. Though he could not 
actually do anything, he could prevent everything. There 
is nothing of record to show that he was corrupt. He did 
not even resort to stealth or stratagem. He carried con- 
tests with a high hand. His whole impulse seems to have 
been a love of power for its own sake. He wanted to be 

263 



WILLIAM PENN 

deputy-governor, and his implacable hostility to Penn was 
mere resentment at the latter 's persistent refusal to appoint 
him. 

With the exception of Markham and Thomas Lloyd, 
Penn chose for his deputy-governors men outside the col- 
ony; and Thomas Lloyd and Markham were the only 
deputies capable of any success whatever in dealing with 
the fanatical rabble that was to be ruled. Even James 
Logan, able, patient, persistent, and untiring as he was, 
labored under the disadvantage of having been imported 
from England for the express purpose of holding office. 
That fact brought upon him the resentment of a majority 
of the earlier settlers. 

Thorough study of the documentary history, which is 
the only guide to judgment as to the conditions and require- 
ments of those times, has fixed in our mind a belief that the 
greatest mistake Penn made in his whole career was the 
personal fight he waged against David Lloyd during his 
second and last visit to Pennsylvania — 1699-1701. Had 
Penn been an adroit politician, he would have made Lloyd 
president of the council, instead of expelling him from it. 
He would have turned Lloyd's bossism to his own good and 
the colony's, instead of making it an element of discord 
and an instrument for disorder. All this could have been 
accomplished if Penn had humored Lloyd while he re- 
mained in Pennsylvania and if Penn had appointed Lloyd 
deputy instead of Hamilton when he went back to England. 
It is questionable whether any one could have converted 
the early Quaker regime into a serious, responsible, and 
effective government. But David Lloyd could have come 

264 



BY CORUESPONDENCE 

nearer to it than any other man available. He abundantly 
demonstrated his capacity to rule the assembly, frivolous 
and v/himsical as it was. Penn's policy toward him in a 
sense compelled him to use his control obstructively. It 
is fair to assume that a wiser policy would have led him to 
a better use of his power. 

Governor Hamilton died April 20, 1703. He was an 
executive officer of tried and proved capacity. He had 
been governor of the Jerseys, to the great benefit of the 
colony and to the satisfaction of its people. But he was 
powerless and his talents useless in Pennsylvania. He was 
assailed on all sides. In revenge for his efforts to organize 
a defensive militia, the Quakers accused him of ' ' conniving 
at piracy" and of '^ encouraging illicit trade." * 

The death of Colonel Hamilton gave Penn the oppor- 
tunity for a master-stroke. He might have appointed David 
Lloyd. True, Lloyd had no fixed principles, but he could 
control the Quaker assembly as its speaker. Was it not a 
fair inference that he could also shape its action as gov- 
ernor? As to policy, Lloyd would have adopted any that 
appeared favorable to his ambitions. He knew Penn would 
never return. His ambition was to be permanent deputy- 

* On this score the Quakers had a singular system of tactics. Every 
governor who tried to prepare for defense of the colony incurred their 
resentment. But they were extremely careful to avoid resistance as ex- 
pressed in legislative acts. They always stood in mortal fear of the home 
Government ; in trembling apprehension lest their charter should be re- 
voked. Therefore in any public resistance to providing means of de- 
fense, they were invariably circumspect and sinuous. In tlieir fear of 
King William they voted money for armament. But their private venge- 
ance knew no bounds. Every governor who proposed a scheme of colo- 
nial defense was secretly maligned and covertly libeled while he lived, 
his memory traduced and reviled after death. 

265 



WILLIAM PENN 

governor. In that capacity he would have done anything 
the Crown might require. As for his Quakerism, he was 
orthodox yesterday, moderate to-day, and ready to be 
heterodox to-morrow. Possibly his remarkable ascendency 
among the Quakers may have been due to the fact that he 
was the most colossal hypocrite in the province. A shrewd 
politician in Penn's place and in Penn's desperate straits 
at the time would have made these elements useful. 

After the death of Hamilton there was delay in select- 
ing his successor, the executive coimcil acting ad interim. 
This delay was due to a cause hitherto unknown in the ad- 
ministration of the colony. The Duke of Marlborough was 
then (1703) in full power, successor of King William in 
everything but the Crown. Knowing that war would be 
waged in America no less furiously than in Europe, he re- 
quired that the ministry should supervise any appointment 
Penn might make. This, of course, meant that the appoint- 
ment should be subject to Marlborough's approval. 

The final outcome of this situation was the choice of 
John Evans to be deputy-governor of Pennsylvania in 
February, 1704. He was the son of a wealthy Welsh 
Quaker named Thomas Evans, who had interests in Penn- 
sylvania, was, or had been, connected with the Free So- 
ciety of Traders, and was Penn's creditor at the time. 
John Evans was not a professed Quaker. In fact, there 
seems to be no historical evidence that he was a member of 
any sect, except that on general principles he was a Protes- 
tant. He was a graduate of Cambridge, had studied law, 
was an officer of militia, and had been defeated as a Whig 
candidate for Parliament. He was only twenty-six years 

266 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

old when appointed deputy-governor of Pennsylvania. 
When he came over to assume his office Evans brought with 
him the eldest son of the Proprietary, William Penn, jr., 
a young man about his own age, whose career in the colony 
was brief and not brilliant, though somewhat noteworthy. 

We may now pause briefly to survey the general condi- 
tion of the province upon the advent of the new governor. 
Though only twenty-two years had elapsed since its first 
settlement, Pennsylvania now had a population of 26,000 
white people, by enumeration, with about 4,000 negroes and 
6,000 Indians, both estimated. Of the 26,000 whites, a 
small majority were Quakers, though the great tide of Ger- 
man, Swiss, Huguenot, and Scotch-Irish immigration had 
set in and was rapidly reducing the Quakers to a numerical 
minority, much to their dismay. Among the younger 
generation of Quakers themselves a considerable tendency 
to liberalism had begun to show itself, and their fathers 
viewed this as the harbinger of disaster. 

The most noteworthy feature of this tendency was a re- 
laxation of the tenet of non-combatantism and great dis- 
content with the old curfew law requiring public places to 
close — their front doors — at 9 o'clock p. m., which, by the 
way, had already been extended to 10 o'clock. Of the 
26,000 inhabitants, the city of Philadelphia had about 8,000 
and the towns of Chester, Newcastle, and Christeen (Wil- 
mington) about 4,000. The population of the towns, how- 
ever, was not wholly urban as to pursuits, because many 
who lived in the towns carried on agricultural operations 
in the immediate neighborhood. Considering the youth of 
the colony, a remarkable degree of comfort and even com- 

267 



WILLIAM PENN 

parative opulence prevailed. In the general sense it was 
already richer and more prosperous than some of the older 
colonies, being equaled or surpassed in that respect only by 
Virginia, settled in 1608; Maryland, settled in 1634; and 
New York, in 1614.* The New England colonies, though 
more populous, were not as rich per capita as those farther 
south, because the agricultural conditions there were less 
favorable and their subsequent commercial and industrial 
prosperity was yet to be developed. 

The War of the Spanish Succession was now in full 
operation, and the chief interest of the royal Government 
in its American colonies lay in their military strength, 
either for self-defense or for aggression upon French 
Canada. Hitherto the fighting Puritans of New England, 
with some assistance from New York — not very important — 
had borne the American brunt of the conflicts between Eng- 
land and France. They had made great efforts and suf- 
fered severe losses in King William 's war ; notably through 
the disastrous expedition of Sir William Phipps against 
Quebec. In the war now raging, Marlborough was deter- 
mined that every American colony should bear its full share 
of the burden, and Pennsylvania must abide the conse- 

* It may be interesting to state at this point the result of an enumera- 
tion ordered by King William in 1701 and completed in 1703 in each of 
the colonies. It was as follows: New Hampshire, 11,000; Massachu- 
setts, 71,000; Rhode Island, 10,700; Connecticut, 31,800; New York, 
34,400; New Jersey, 14,400; Pennsylvania, 2G,000 ; Maryland, 24,800; 
Virginia, 69,000; the two Carolinas, 13,000. Total, 300,100. Georgia 
had not been founded then. Maine was part of Massachusetts. Vermont 
was included in New York, and Delaware was in Pennsylvania. The 
King's object in causing this enumeration was primarily to provide a basis 
for estimating the military strength of the colonies in the impending war. 

268 



BY CO U \l E S P N D E N C E 

quences. The duke, like his predecessor, King William, 
was in favor of terminating the proprietary government 
and asserting the sole authority of the Crown; but the 
Queen would not assent to that. She believed, however, 
that Pennsylvania must be brought into line with the rest 
of the colonies, and for this task Evans was selected. 

On his arrival Evans found David Lloyd in supreme 
control through the assembly, which he carried in his pocket. 
Almost the first act of Governor Evans was to issue a 
proclamation calling for the enrolment of citizens for serv- 
ice in the militia. James Logan in a letter to Penn, dated 
May 26, 1704, says that "the overseers of the press* were 
not willing to have the proclamation printed. ' ' 

Governor Evans then had the proclamation printed at 
his own expense. The "overseers of the press" tried to 
prosecute the printer, but were restrained by David Lloyd, 
who told them that the home Government would not want 
any better pretext for the subversion of the whole system and 
an assumption of control by the Crown. Evans reported 
the fact to the English colonial office and also to Penn, as 
a sample of what the Quakers understood "freedom of 
conscience" to mean when applied to any belief but their 
own. Other governors had tried to organize a militia, but 
they had first asked authority and supplies from the assem- 
bly. Evans organized the militia first, and then demanded 
an appropriation for its support. James Logan, in the 

* The overseers of the press were a commiltee of Quakers appointed 
as censors to prevent printing of " scurrilous, indecent, or immoral papers, 
])amphlets, or books." They always construed that list to include every- 
thing opposed to their own creed or sect. 

269 



WILLIAM P E N N 

letter already quoted, says that the governor enrolled 
"three companies in this tovm [Philadelphia], three in 
Newcastle, two in Kent, and two in Sussex. ' ' Evans him- 
self reported that he had * ' enrolled a regiment of ten com- 
panies, of which all but three are in the territory [Dela- 
ware]. It is unequal, for that the seven companies come 
from less- than one-third the whole population and only 
three from the other two-thirds. ' ' 

Over this a fierce contest ensued between the governor 
and the assembly, and finally Evans dissolved the as- 
sembly and issued writs for a new election. Logan was 
with him on the question of self-defense. By their joint 
efforts David Lloyd's faction was defeated. The new as- 
sembly voted money, but the Quakers could not be induced 
to specify that it was for the organization and equipment 
of an armed force. They assigned part of it "to the gov- 
ernor" and part "to the Queen," thereby saving their con- 
sciences. The principal argument used by Governor Evans 
in this "campaign" was the evidence he had in his posses- 
sion showing that, unless the new assembly should be found 
willing to meet the requirements of the home Government 
in the matter of defense, the Crown would give the col- 
ony another dose of Fletcher, and this time a perma- 
nent one. 

The governor now completed the fort at Newcastle which 
his predecessor had begun. He also armed and equipped 
his militia with serviceable weapons and accouterments. 
His regiment was about six hundred strong, of whom only 
four were Quakers. The monthly meeting proposed to 
expel these from the society with all the odium that scold- 

270 



13 Y C () R R I^: S P N D E N C E 

ing could heap upon them, but were again restrained by 
David Lloyd, who told them that such action would not be 
viewed leniently by the home Government, that Evans was 
sent there to find a pretext for abolishing the charter, and 
they must avoid every appearance of contempt or disobedi- 
ence. The young militiamen were not expelled, but they 
were savagely ostracized from Quaker society. Affairs 
now went on with little or no apparent friction for some 
time. Evans, who was a shrewd politician, patched up a 
truce with David Lloyd and offered to make him a member 
of the council. This met with the earnest disapproval of 
the Pcnn faction, but Logan silenced that, as Penn's per- 
sonal representative, and for the first time in the history 
of the colony in the absence of the Proprietary himself har- 
mony, or the semblance of it, reigned. 

In April, 1706, a squadron of four fast-sailing frigates 
was fitted out at Louisbourg, Cape Breton, and sent to cruise 
off the coast between Long Island and the capes of the 
Chesapeake.* Its commander was De Castries, an enter- 
prising young officer who had "learned his trade" under 
Jean Bart and Duguay-Trouin. Very soon he had the 
whole coast in a state of terror. The British navy was 
w^eak in American waters that year. Two small English 
corvettes were guarding the Delaware capes. These De 
Castries chased up the bay almost to Newcastle. He landed 
at Lewes for wood, water, and fresh provisions, but did not 
molest the inhabitants except to take away some of their 

* Histoire de la Marine fran^aisp. Captain dc Castries was firand father 
of tlie marshal of the same name who was French Minister of Marine in 
Paul Jones's time. 

271 



WILLIAM P E N N 

live stock. Altogether he captured twenty-six English 
merchant ships, besides several fishing vessels, while on his 
station. 

Near the end of May, 1706, Governor Evans became ap- 
prehensive lest the French squadron, finding the Delaware 
estuary so feebly defended, should venture to attack Phila- 
delphia, lie determined to ascertain, by real experi- 
ment, what the behavior of the Quakers would be if their 
homes were actually invaded. He therefore caused a letter 
to be sent to him from New Castle announcing the near 
approach of the French squadron into the Delaware. Their 
landing at Lewes was already known to him ; also that they 
had chased the two English ships up the bay. The letter 
from New Castle exaggerated the landing at Lewes into the 
burning of the little town and a ravage of the whole settle- 
ment. Upon receipt of this letter, the governor had the news 
circulated through the town, mounted his horse, drew his 
sword, and called the people to arms, en masse, for defense 
of their firesides. 

The scene that followed beggars description. It hap- 
pened to be "weekly meeting." The meeting-houses were 
emptied. On every side could be seen frantic Friends sink- 
ing their plate and other valuables in the creeks or swamps, 
too wise even in their panic to bury them in the ground 
for fear the fresh-turned earth might betray them. Then 
all took to the woods with their wives and children. It was 
a veritable "hegira of the faithful." The Quaker part of 
Philadelphia — more than half — became absolutely depopu- 
lated. The shock of an eartlKjuake could not have wrought 
more devastation in society ; the eruption of a volcano like 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

Mont Pelee could scarcely have made the town more dcso- 
hite. 

The Quaker population of the town was then at least five 
thousand. Governor Evans, in his explanation, said that 
only seven of them manifested the least intention of defend- 
ing their firesides or their helpless women and children! 
The rest fled and continued to flee. Some of them did not 
venture home again for two days. "The wicked flee when 
no man pursueth, ' ' but this was the flight of the righteous. 
Governor Evans was alarmed at the effect of his ruse. He 
believed, before he tried the experiment, that if war and 
rapine came to their doorsteps, the Quakers would defend 
them. But if a mere alarm, and that a false one, could 
produce such a headlong stampede, such a breakneck bolt- 
ing in all directions, what might the actual sight of the 
enemy do ? He declared his belief that some of them would 
actually perish with terror at the sight of a French imiform 
or sound of a French gun. But he had one satisfaction : 
not one able-bodied man of any non-Quaker persuasion 
flinched. Even negro slaves asked for arms and ammuni- 
tion, declaring their intention to defend the homes whence 
their Quaker masters had fled. The total non-Quaker popu- 
lation of Philadelphia was about four thousand. Of these, 
nearly seven hundred able-bodied men assembled on So- 
ciety Hill with any sort of weapons they could flnd and 
demanded to be led against the invaders. James Logan, in 
a letter to Penn, dated in June, 1706, says : ' ' The people 
threw their goods into wells and all manner of holes, greatly 
to their damage ; . . . many of them fled, but were misera- 
bly insulted and menaced by those who bore arms ! ' ' Isaac 
19 273 



WILLIAM PENN 

Norris said, also in a letter to Penn: "Not a Frieud of any 
note behaved but as becomes our profession." — meaning, 
of course, that not a Quaker of any note failed to run. 
Stoughton, in his Life of Penn, says it was "an infamous 
trick." It would have been so but for the reasons which 
impelled it and the people on whom it was played. Wat- 
son, in his Annals of Philadelphia, with a sense of the ludi- 
crous remarkable in a Quaker, says that "the whole scene, 
such as it was, might afford subject for the poet's pen and 
the painter's skill." Undoubtedly, for the poet who wrote 
John Gilpin, or for Patch, who sketched The Retreat from 
Limerick. The incident found its way across the ocean and 
attracted the mirthful fancy of Dean Swift: "That," he 
said, "was, after all, nothing more than the general run of 
Quakers ! ' ' 

On the whole, this episode is passed over very briefly 
by historians of the sect. They condemn Evans, but do 
not dwell upon the subject. They took their revenge on 
Evans in other ways. He himself has described one phase 
of their vengeance. "For weeks afterward," he said, 
"they would stand on the other side of the street and make 
faces at me as I passed by. " 

As soon as they could compose their nerves sufficiently 
to sign their names to petitions, nearly all the Quakers of 
Philadelphia joined in a vehement demand upon Penn to 
remove Evans, but Penn at that moment was powerless to 
comply, even had he desired to do so. Evans had been 
forced upon him by members of the ministry, and their 
consent would be necessary in order to remove him. The 
only Quaker in the province, however, who knew that fact 

274 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

was James Lo(;:aii. IVnn, in the circiiinstaiiees, was embar- 
rassed. He did not like to antagonize Evans without bet- 
ter cause. After several months of deliberation, he sent a 
long letter of admonition to Evans, who received it in a 
proper spirit. It is impossible to view the artifice of Evans 
in any other light than as unwarrantable, undignified, and 
mischievous. Moreover, it was unnecessary. He knew 
the pusillanimity of the Quakers just as well before he stam- 
peded them with a false alarm as afterward. He remained 
in office nearly three years after the episode and was ulti- 
mately removed, with the consent of his friends in the min- 
istry, however, and for other and more cogent reasons. 

Another event in Governor Evans's administration may 
be found much more exhaustively treated in the journals 
and correspondence in the Friends' Library. This is an 
escapade of young William Penn, in which the governor 
himself was involved. Young Penn had been sent to the 
colony at the beginning of the Evans regime. He was then 
twenty-five years old. On the death of his elder brother, 
Springett Penn, in 1696, he had become, imder the English 
law of primogeniture, heir apparent of the Proprietary, 
and his father desired him to live in the colony, become ac- 
quainted with its people, and familiarize himself with the 
conduct of public affairs. 

Young Penn is described by contemporary chroniclers 
as an exceedingly handsome, affable man, liberal in his 
views, generous, and disposed to extravagance. He was 
also convivial. His Quakerism was merely an affair of 
youthful education. He had never received the Inward 
Light, and when he grew up found the peculiarities of the 

275 



WILLIAM PENN 

sect irksome. The result was that at maturity he had no 
religious convictions whatever, and became dissipated to 
an extent that gave his father infinite trouble and sorrow. 
One, and possibly the principal, object William Penn had 
in view when he sent him to Pennsylvania was a hope that 
he might find there less temptation to vice and more in- 
centive to steadiness and application than in London. But 
the sequel proved that the yoimg man was either already 
too far gone on the wrong road, or intrinsically bad. The 
old court records of the colony contain the following entry :* 

1704— 1st of 7th Mo. [September 1.] to wit: The Grand 
Jury do present some of the young gentry for an assault 
on James Wood, Constable and James Dough, Watch : ma- 
king riot at the Inn of Enoch Story by night, in Combes' 
Alley. Namely: William Penn, jun. gent; John Finney, 
Sheriff; Thomas Gray, Scrivener; and Joseph Ralph, gent. 
It is charged that Mr. Penn called for pistols to pistol the 
complainants, but none were seen. The keeper of the Inn, 
Enoch Story, was of the party but gave no hand and is 
detained for witness. 

An effort was made to implicate Governor Evans, 
though he was not named in the presentment. He proved 
that his presence was accidental, that he was passing along 
the street when the disturbance occurred, and he interfered 
to restore the peace. An alderman named Wilcox who was 
with the officers attacked the governor, who knocked him 
down. The Friend — a sort of general journal of the colony 
from the Quaker point of view — says (Vol. XVIII, No. 46) : 
"Alderman Wilcox availed himself of the darkness to fail 

* Watson's Annals, vol. i, p. 308. 
276 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

in recognizing the Chief Magistrate, to whom he gave a 
severe drubbing," etc. This was written many years after 
the event. The testimony taken at the time describes Wil- 
cox as being himself "influenced by rum," and as "suffer- 
ing sundry bruises inflicted by the Governor's hand or 
cane." The case was never brought to trial, but the attor- 
ney-general, after investigation, brought the matter before 
the council, on information, reversing the action of the 
grand jury, and making the watch officers and Alderman 
Wilcox defendants. No further action was taken on either 
side, but the Lloyd faction of Quakers made great talk 
about it for a long time afterward, and the extant cor- 
respondence concerning it would fill a chapter of this 
work. 

It had, however, the effect of shortening young Penn's 
stay in the colony. He soon afterward sold the "Manor 
of Williamstadt, " containing 7,000 acres, which had been 
set apart for him by his father when he reached his ma- 
jority. This manor comprised the most of the present city 
of Norristown. Young Penn sold it to Isaac Norris and 
William Trent for £850 (say $4,250) and took passage for 
England in the frigate Jersey a few months later. Norris 
and Trent availed themselves of the young man's necessi- 
ties to drive a hard bargain. The place was then worth 
three times the price they paid, and its valuation in less 
than a lifetime was multiplied by fifty. 

Isaac Norris was the devoutest of Quakers and — in his 
letters, at least — the most devoted friend of William Penn. 
But the latter in a letter to Logan not long afterward ex- 
pressed strong disapproval of the hard bargain with his 

277 



WILLIAM PENN 

son. The devoutest Quakers were generally the shrewd- 
est. The remark of old Captain Blackwell that "each 
prays with his neighbor on First Days and then preys upon 
him the other six" was often exemplified. 

Students of history have doubtless noted a tendency to 
worldly thrift and business cunning on the part of races 
or peoples that have suffered religious persecution; for 
example, the Jews of the world at large, the Armenians of 
Turkey, the Mennonites of Russia, the Mormons of Utah, 
the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and other less familiar sects. 
The logic may not be easy to trace, but the fact is incontest- 
able. Avarice and shrewdness, parsimony and cunning, 
seem to be products of religious persecution, and money 
seems to gravitate toward martyrs. In the early settle- 
ment of Pennsylvania the Quakers formed almost the whole 
population, and therefore had to practise their arts of 
thrift one upon another. This was the primary cause of 
their bickerings and dissensions. Later, when the large in- 
flux of non-Quaker immigrants furnished more desirable 
subjects for their skill, the Quakers developed a gratifying 
state of harmony among themselves. 

William Penn was already crushed under debt, half 
distracted by the dissensions between the assembly and his 
deputy-governor, and well-nigh hopeless for the future, 
when this new trial in his son's disgrace came upon him. 
He received different versions of the young man 's conduct, 
but none, not even that of the son himself, put any face 
on the affair as other than disgraceful and humiliating. In 
a letter to James Logan, dated December 11, 1704, Penn 
pours out his grief : 

278 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

A melancholy scene enough upon my poor child. Penn- 
sylvania began it by my absence here, and there it is accom- 
plished with expense, disappointment, ingratitude and 
poverty. 

The Lord uphold me under these sharp and heavy bur- 
dens, with his [young William Penn's] free spirit. I 
should have been glad of an account of his expenses and 
more of a rent-roll, if I must perish with gold in my view 
but not in my power. To have neither supplies nor a reason 
of credit here [in England] is certainly a cruel circum- 
stance. I want to know what I have to stand upon and help 
myself with. He [young William] is my greatest affliction, 
for his soul 's and my country 's and family 's sake. 

Penn goes on to complain of the sale of Williamstadt 
without his knowledge, declares that they "did not send 
him word what the manor was sold for," but when young 
William arrived in England he ' ' drew a bill for £10 to ride 
two hundred miles home, which he performed in two days 
and a night. . . . See how much more easily the bad 
Friend's treatment of him stumbled him from the blessed 
truth than those he acknowledges to be good ones could 
prevail to keep him in possession of it ; from the prevailing 
ground in himself to what is levity more than what is re- 
tired, circumspect and virtuous." 

Penn's language in this, as in most of his letters to 
Logan, is involved, obscure, and even vague. It betrays a 
hesitation to speak freely about the conduct of Isaac Nor- 
ris, whose name he does not mention. This is one among 
many evidences in his correspondence that he was afraid 
of Norris, who subsequently proved to be his creditor in 
large amounts and who was at that time the richest Quaker 

279 



WILLIAM PENN 

in the colony so far as concerned ready money. Norris 
owed all his prosperity to Penn, who had aided him in every 
way during the first two or three years of the colony, and 
he now expressed his gratitude by driving a hard bargain 
with Penn's prodigal son and exacting usury from Penn 
himself. 

The truce between Governor Evans and David Lloyd was 
of short duration, A new assembly was elected in 1706. 
Lloyd carried it by a good working majority, was elected 
speaker, and fully resumed his negative control of the prov- 
ince. Its history during the rest of the Evans administra- 
tion was that of a deadlock between the executive and leg- 
islative branches. For two years no appropriation was 
made for the support of the government. Evans tried the 
expedient of collecting the arrears of quit-rents with a view 
to using the proceeds for the payment of public expenses. 
Lloyd put a resolution through his legislature to impeach 
the secretary of the province, James Logan. The governor 
and Logan retorted by an order in Council accusing Lloyd 
of high crimes and misdemeanors, among which was a 
charge, substantiated by several members of the assembly 
itself, that Lloyd had altered the text of acts and resolutions 
after the assembly had passed them. 

The events of this disgraceful squabble are too prolix as 
well as too disgusting for detailed description. If set forth 
in extenso they alone would fill a volume larger than this 
one. Unfortunately the personal behavior of Governor 
Evans was not of a kind to dignify the executive branch of 
the government. He was intemperate — sometimes grossly 
so — recklessly immoral, and had on more than one occasion 

280 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

disregarded the plain letter of the law in official acts. His 
most scandalous act was the seduction of a pretty young 
Quakeress named Susan Harwood, though he provided for 
the child and subsequently induced a man to marry the 
girl. He was also accused of immoral conduct with Indian 
women at Conestoga and other native villages which he 
visited from time to time. He levied and collected by forco 
a tax on vessels passing up and down the river, using ther 
proceeds to buy ammunition for the channel defenses. This 
tax was not authorized by law, but Evans claimed that his- 
powers as commander-in-chief of the defenses carried with 
them the right of resorting to extreme measures when the 
assembly failed or refused to make proper provision. 
Finally, in May, 1708, Penn determined to remove Evans, 
and announced that purpose in a letter to Logan, under 
date of June 3. The material part of it is as follows : 

Thy silence since last 6th month gives me great uneasi- 
ness; since the virulent treatment of D. Lloyd, &c., can 
much sooner find its way to Philip Ford, and by him to 
G. W., W. M. and T. L., who have been with me at my lodg- 
ings, in Old Baily, to represent the state of the province, 
and render it very lamentable, under the present Lieuten- 
ant-Governor ; and unless I will discharge him, and put in 
a man of virtue, years, and known experience, and of a 
moderate spirit, they can not avoid laying the Assem- 
bly's complaint before the Queen and Council; in which 
they have enumerated all the faults, if not impru- 
dences, they can lay to his conduct. The alarm, the refusal 
of the law for courts, the New Castle law, to pay toll com- 
ing from, and going to, Philadelphia, and the violent strug- 
gle upon it; the affair of young Susan Harwood, and con- 
niving at the escape of the old one made from justice, and 

281 



WILLIAM PENN 

accompanying them to another province, for avoiding 
shame and punishment. To which they add a voyage to 
Susquehannah, with the vilest character of his, and his 
retinue's practises, in the families of the people at Cones- 
toga. My soul mourns under these things, for the very 
fame of them, but much more if true. 

I doubt not his regards for my interest, in the main, 
but this disjoints all, and cuts me down at once; so that I 
have been forced to think, much against my desire, of look- 
ing out another to put in his place; and, at last, I have 
found one, of whose morals, experience and fidelity, I have 
some knowledge, and of his family, forty years, also a 
recommending character from persons of great rank. And, 
he assures me, he intends to center with us, and end his 
days in that country, being forty-six years of age, and has 
sold his estate in Europe, to lay out his money there, and 
be a good freeholder among you. 

The ''one" to whom Penn refers in the foregoing was 
Colonel Charles Gookin. He was himself a Quaker, "con- 
vinced," as Penn himself had been, by the preaching of 
Thomas Loe. But his ancestors were Catholics, his grand- 
father, Sir Vincent Gookin, having been a devoted retainer 
of James I, who gave him a considerable estate of escheated 
lands in Ireland, Penn further says in the letter just 
quoted : 

He [Gookin] comes highly commended by Lieutenant- 
General Earle and Major-General Cadogan, and the In- 
goldsby family, as Avell as Major Morris, my Steward, and 
some friends in Ireland : and if he goes, it will be as one 
resolved to retire, and absolutely disposed to recommend 
himself to you by sobriety and thriftiness, rather than lux- 
ury or rapaciousness. Which I thought fit to communicate. 

282 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

And pray break it to him [Governor Evans], and that the 
reason why I chose to change, rather than contest with the 
complaints before the Queen in Council, is, that he may 
stand the fairer for any employment elsewhere; which 
would be very doubtful if those blemishes were aggravated 
in such a presence. 

This letter betrays two tendencies which were now be- 
coming more and more characteristic of Penn. One was 
a disposition to avoid personal responsibility, the other to 
seek and accept advice from people of high rank and good 
standing at court, whether they really knew anything about 
the conditions or not. 

It was, of course, his own affair to notify Governor 
Evans, and he should have done so in a frank, formal, and 
official manner. He preferred, however, to have Logan 
''break it to him" and explain, in a second-hand way, the 
reasons. Penn had never removed a deputy-governor be- 
fore, all others having been relieved at their own request 
or by death. It is probable that the weakening of his mind 
and will, which Hannah Penn not long afterward described 
as " a lethargic illness, ' ' was at this time beginning to affect 
him. 

Gookin arrived in Pennsylvania early in 1709 and re- 
lieved Governor Evans, who gave up the office without 
regret. The previous autumn, after being advised of 
Penn's intention to supersede him, Evans had married the 
daughter of John Moore, a young Quakeress said to be the 
belle of the colony. He remained several years in the col- 
ony, engaged in commercial pursuits in connection with his 
father-in-law, and amassed a considerable fortune. In 

283 



WILLIAM PENN 

1717 his father died, and Evans succeeded to the estate in 
Wales. He then removed thither and lived to a great age. 
During his stay of eight years in the colony after being 
relieved of the governorship he lived at the Fairman man- 
sion, near the "Treaty Tree," and, with his beautiful and 
accomplished wife, dispensed a hospitality that became 
almost proverbial. As a "family man" his behavior seems 
to have been irreproachable. 

Once, about the middle of Gookin's administration, 
when the latter had brought the colony to the brink of 
anarchy, Hannah Penn tried to persuade Evans to resume 
the governorship, but he declined. He would not partici- 
pate in the politics of the province in any way, even re- 
fusing to vote at elections. After his return to England he 
continued his commercial pursuits, represented his county 
in Parliament, and for some years was high sheriff of Mon- 
mouth. He died in 1779, ninety-one years old. In the 
all-round sense, John Evans was undoubtedly the ablest of 
Pennsylvania's deputy-governors under Penn. But he was 
not adapted to the place by nature or by training. In fact, 
no one seemed able to manage the rabble except Penn him- 
self and David Lloyd — the one as an overpowering states- 
man, the other as a resistless demagogue. But Penn, as 
we have seen, never tried the difficult task c(uite two years 
at a time, while Lloyd, as we shall soon see, came to grief 
through the fickleness of his followers. 

Gookin 's administration began under flattering auspices. 
The assembly he found in power on his arrival was that of 
Lloyd. After a few months of vain effort to get along with 
that assembly, Gookin dissolved it and appealed to the 

284 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

people. Then occurred that iiicalculabh^ l)heiiomenon of 
public upheaval known to modern political management 
as "a tidal wave." Not one man who had adhered to 
Lloyd in the previous assembly was reelected. Lloyd him- 
self was beaten, his adversary, Richard Hill, receiving nine 
votes to his one. Hill was chosen speaker. Lloyd was not 
only beaten politically, but, as the seciuel soon proved, de- 
stroyed professionally. Up to that time he had been the 
leading lawyer in the colony. Now clients shunned him, 
and those who had cases in his hands took them to others. 
Lawsuits were piled up against him by numerous creditors. 
He managed to pay his debts, but his property in Phila- 
delphia was swept away by the sacrifices necessary to do it. 
He then, in 1712, retired to a fine farm he, or rather his wife, 
owned within the present limits of Chester,* where he spent 
the ensuing six years meditating upon the ingratitude of 
republics in general and the instability of Quaker factions 
in particular. 

For four years Colonel Gookin's administration was 
marked by few events worthy of special note. He suc- 
ceeded in establishing a system of provincial defense on a 
sound basis. The assembly refused to authorize the rais- 
ing and equipping of a battalion of provincial troops to 
participate in an expedition against the French West 
Indies, but they almost unanimously voted £2,000 sterling 
''as a gift to the most gracious Queen for her goodness to 
them," and £600 more to the governor "for the erection 
and maintenance of an official household suited to his rank." 

* Part of liis farm is now occupied by the great Tidewater Steel Works 
of Chester. 

285 



WILLIAM PENN 

The colony grew beyond all precedent. By 1714 its 
population had reached 60,000, more than doubling in 
eleven years. The immigration that caused this marvelous 
growth was very largely non-Quaker, nearly all German, 
Swiss, Scotch-Irish, and Huguenot. Seventeen thousand 
came in the two years 1712, 1713.* The immediate effect 
of this was to obliterate the former sectarian party lines, to 
overthrow the Established Quaker Church, and to create 
a new political system from the ground up. For a time the 
Quaker hierarchy in temporal power struggled desperately 
to breast the inpouring flood, but in vain. Individual in- 
terests proved stronger than sectarian cohesion, and by the 
end of Gookin's administration the regime of Quakerism 
I^ure and simple had gone to pieces amid the cry of ' ' Sauve 
qui pcut!" 

But if this consummation destroyed the hierarchy as a 
whole, it fabulously enriched the individual members. 
And, as they saw temporal power passing from them, the 
devout Quakers could console themselves with the flood of 
wealth in this world's goods that fairly engulfed them. In 
1718, when Penn died, Pennsylvania had over 90,000 peo- 
ple and was the richest colony in America. But Penn him- 
self died insolvent, of disease that began while he was in 
Fleet Prison for debt. 

In 1714 Governor Gookin began to manifest symptoms 
of mental unbalance. He became morose, moody, and 
splenetic. History assigns no particular cause, except that 

* This was the first wave of the great tide that increased the popula- 
tion of Pennsylvania from about 26,000 in 1701 to 280,000 in 1761 and 
360,000 in 1776. 

286 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

his maternal grandfather died a maniac. The first public 
evidence of the governor's aberration occurred when a 
committee from the assembly waited on him with the usual 
official information that the body was organized and ready 
to receive his communications. This was in the month of 
March, 1715, and extremely cold weather — a blizzard, in 
modern parlance — had delayed the gathering of a quorum 
two days beyond the legal time of meeting. 

Gookin upbraided the committee for this tardiness and 
ordered them out of doors. They went, except the chair- 
man, who tried to remonstrate. Governor Gookin kicked 
the chairman down the front steps of the executive man- 
sion. Then he struck an attitude and exclaimed — in imita- 
tion, perhaps, of Cromwell threescore years before : "Go 
to your homes, ye palterers ! Ye are no longer an As- 
sembly ! ' ' 

Prior to that time there had been acute friction between 
the governor and the assembly over the question of reor- 
ganizing the provincial judiciary. It is only fair to say, 
without going into tedious details, that the assembly was 
right and the governor wrong on this issue. The assembly 
voiced the sense of the people, which was that the province, 
by reason of its phenomenal growth in population, industry, 
and trade, had outgrown the primitive judiciary system 
framed for the original colony, and the bill they proposed 
was mainly drawn by Roger Mompesson, who had been 
chief justice of Pennsylvania in 1706- '07, but at the time 
under consideration was chief justice of New York. Prior 
to that he had been appellate or reviewing judge in vice- 
* Colonial Records : Penn-Logan Corr. ; Hazard's Register. 
287 



WILLIAM PENN 

admiralty, by royal appointment, for all the colonies from 
Massachusetts to Pennsylvania inclusive. He was beyond 
doubt the leading jurist of his time in America and had 
few if any superiors in England. The assembly passed it. 
The governor refused to execute its provisions. He did 
not possess the veto power, but he could practically nullify 
a law by refusing to put it in operation — a most singular 
and dangerous anomaly, possible only in such semifeudal 
times and under such crude development of popular home 
rule. 

The result of this deadlock, described in the foregoing 
chapter, was a total suspension of judicial proceedings in 
the colony of Pennsylvania. There appeared to be no 
remedy. The assembly could not impeach the deputy ap- 
pointed by the Proprietary. The power of removal was 
vested wholly in William Penn. At that time he was in- 
capable of transacting business of any kind; was not even 
permitted to know the state of affairs, even could he have 
comprehended it. The situation was almost grotesque. In 
the colony a crazy deputy-governor. In England a Pro- 
prietary, sole source of executive authority, with softening 
of th(^ brain. The one apparently capable of no action but 
that which was wrong, the other incapable of any action 
at all. It was unquestionably the reductio ad absurdum 
of proprietary government. And it lasted two years. 
Finally Hannah Penn took the emergency in her own hands. 
Penn had made a will by the terms of which the Earls of 
Oxford, Mortimer, and Poulett were made trustees of the 
Proprietary government with power to transfer it to the 
Queen or to any other person. Hannah Penn was made 

288 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

sole executrix of his private estate. This will had been 
made before Penn 's mind completely yielded to his malady. 
Though it could not become legally operative until the death 
of its testator, this will was made the basis of assumption 
of proprietary power by Hannah Penn, with the approval 
of the trustees. The law officers of the Crown approved it 
also, and the Queen assented. Hannah Penn then appointed 
Sir William Keith to succeed Gookin, and he assumed the 
office in March, 1717. In the meantime, before Sir William 
arrived in the colony, Gookin left it without even informing 
the council or assembly and went to England, where he 
arrived shortly after Keith sailed for America. Gookin 's 
object in going to England was, as he himself declared, 
to lay the state of the colony before the Queen. But he 
was quietly taken in hand by the law officers of the Crown, 
who subjected him to examination and declared him insane, 
or, to use the words of the finding itself, ' ' of unsound mind 
and deranged." Gookin was the last governor deputized 
by Penn. For the sake of form, the trustees and Hannah 
Penn had him sign Keith's commission. But, though he 
could still write his name, it was not believed that he knew 
what he was signing. However, as no one was inclined to 
question the proceeding, except possibly Gookin, who was 
himself insane, Keith became deputy-governor and held 
the office from March, 1717, to June, 1726. 

Here William Penn's connection with the government 
of Pennsylvania ceases, his last act that might be termed 
"official" having been performed unconsciously or without 
knowledge of its meaning. But, in order to avoid a sudden 
break in the history of proprietary government itself, it 
30 289 



WILLIAM PENN 

seems necessary to trace tlie succession to the end, which 
was fifty-eight years after Penn's death. 

Sir William Keith was the sou of a hereditary Scotch 
baronet of the same name and had been bred to public 
affairs. The first four years of his administration were 
signalized by harmony in all branches of government, re- 
forms in the judiciary system, revenue laws, and public in- 
struction. The Quakers from the beginning had maintained 
a theory of free public schools, but had never reduced it 
to a practical system. This was done under Sir William 
Keith. Pennsj^lvania can claim the credit of originating 
* ' common schools, ' ' as the term is understood to-day. The 
Act of 1721, providing for building schoolhouses at public 
expense, payment of teachers by direct tax levied for that 
purpose, and creation of territorial school districts, was 
undoubtedly the pioneer act of its kind known to the his- 
tory of civilization. Provisions somewhat similar existed 
at that time in New England, but there were some restric- 
tions and the basis was sectarian. The Pennsylvania sys- 
tem was absolutely free and wholly secular. Keith also 
placed the militia on a permanent footing, authorized by 
express act of the assembly and maintained by regular ap- 
propriation. The assembly that passed the "defense act," 
as it was called, had a small Quaker majority, notwith- 
standing that the sect was considerably less than half the 
total population. But many of the Friends supported the 
defense act. James Logan, who was then the leading Qua- 
ker m the province and president of its council, believed in 
the use of armed force whenever necessary to protect life 
and property against wanton aggression or to enforce the 

290 



BY CORRESPONDENCE 

laws. Those of the Society of Friends who voted for the 
defense act were guided by his advice. lie wrote a k'tter 
in which fine distinctions were drawn between the bearing 
of arms by an individual and the voting of money to be 
used for defensive purposes. "The conscience may and 
should govern the man," he said, "but to hold that one 
man's conscience should govern all other men is the most 
complete denial of liberty of conscience itself." He ad- 
vised all Quakers who conscientiously felt that they could 
not vote for defense to refrain from being candidates for 
the assembly, on the ground that "one man can have no 
right to assume duties affecting the welfare of the whole 
body, knowing beforehand that he will feel in conscience 
bound to obstruct the performance of any one of those 
duties. ' ' 

But perhaps the most remarkable act of Keith's admin- 
istration was the resurrection of David Lloyd from his agri- 
cultural seclusion at Chester and his appointment to be 
chief justice of Pennsylvania. This was the act of Hannah 
Penn as executrix of the Proprietary under her husband's 
will. James Logan acquiesced, saying in a letter to her 
that "he [Lloyd] is a good lawyer, of sound judgment, 
though pertinacious and somewhat inclined to vengeance. 
. . . But it is meet for us to hope that the meditations of 
private life these six years past have softened his asperities 
and brought him to a frame [of mind] in wdiich his unde- 
niable talents may be made useful. ... In high judicial 
office he will not be beset by the temptations of faction, 
and his learning in the law with his knowledge of the peo- 
ple's needs will make him a strong public servant. . . . 

291 



WILLIAM PENN 

For my own part, I forget the past, both as to myself aud 
as to our great and good friend [meaning William Penn], 
and leave his [Lloyd's] conduct in that past to the review 
of his own conscience!" 

Lloyd held the chief justiceship until his death, in 1731, 
and the relations between him and Logan in public affairs 
were marked by cordiality and confidence. But privately 
or socially they were never reconciled. 



292 



CHAPTER XII 

1702-1712 

PENN'S LAST DAYS AND HIS LETTERS TO 
LOGAN 



CHAPTER XII 

17U2-1712 
PENN's LxVST days and his letters to LOGAN 

From Peiin 's return to England, in 1702, until the end 
of his life the correspondence between him and the pro- 
vincial secretary, James Logan, embodies the most impor- 
tant or salient parts of its history. That Penn's intention 
was to return to Pennsylvania as soon as he should have 
set at rest the movement in Parliament against him and his 
Proprietary is abundantly indicated by his letters from 
1702 to 1709. But while his letters to James Logan, Gov- 
ernor Evans, Judge Mompesson and others contain many 
announcements of such purpose, they are invariably quali- 
fied by an " if " or a " provided ' ' or other phrase calculated 
to keep the matter constantly in the conditional or the sub- 
junctive mood. 

This correspondence is interesting not only as a journal 
or "log-book" of history written on the spot, but also as 
an index to the character of Penn himself and as a current 
record of the gradual decay of his mind toward the end. 
The whole mass of this correspondence was given to the 
American Philosophical Society by Deborah Logan many 
years ago. As presented by her to the society it was in 
excellent preservation, considering its great age. Use of 
it, to a limited extent only, has been made by writers on 

295 



WILLIAM PENN 

Pennsylvania and its history, and in other works, since the 
middle of the nineteenth century. Taken together it is 
undoubtedly the most complete and consecutive volume of 
historical correspondence extant on any subject, and it has 
been enriched not a little by the annotations and comments 
of Deborah Logan herself, a woman of rare ability, culture, 
and grace. The present chapter of this work, therefore, 
will be based almost wholly upon this correspondence, part 
of which only has been printed in a book published by the 
Society of Friends and called Passages from the Life and 
Writings of William Penn, together with excerpts here and 
there from the original MSS. 

Penn's career in England from 1702 to 1712 may be 
divided into three parts : First, his efforts to prevent the 
absorption of his colony by the Crown on its own terms, or 
practically without his consent. In this he was successful. 
Second, his efforts to discharge his expenses and pay his 
accumulated debts by raising money on the value of his 
proprietary charter and his personal estates in Pennsyl- 
vania. In this he was sometimes successful and sometimes 
not, but in the long run he failed. Third, his efforts to sell 
his rights to the Crown on his own terms and with guaran- 
tees of certain special concessions and privileges to the 
Quakers. In this he failed, partly because of the stub- 
bornness with which he adhered to the interests of the Qua- 
kers as distinguished from other colonists, and partly be- 
cause of the malady which suddenly destroyed his capacity 
to transact business, in the year 1712. 

In the correspondence these three classes of effort are 
carried along together and can not be intelligibly separated 

296 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

so far as concerns the letters themselves. The first impor- 
tant contribution to this epistolary history is a letter from 
Penn to Logan, the material part of which is as follows : 

London, 21st of 4th mo.^ 1702. 

Never had poor man my task, with neither men nor 
money to assist me. I therefore strictly charge thee that 
thou represent to Friends there, that I am distressed for 
want of supply; that I am forced to borrow money, and 
add debts to debts, instead of paying them off; besides, my 
uncomfortable distance from my family, and the unspeak- 
able fatigue and vexation of following attendance, drafts 
of answer, conferences, Council's opinions, hearings, &c., 
with the charge that follows them, guineas melting, four, 
five, six a week, and sometimes as many in a day. My wife 
hitherto has been maintained by her father, whence she is 
coming next week to Worminghurst on my daughter's ac- 
count, in likelihood to marry. I have been more sensibly 
touched for the honor of the country's administration than 
for myself. 

The scene is much changed since the death of the King. 
The church party advances upon the Whig, and yet I find 
good friends, though severely against some people's wills. 
I have had the advice of some of the wisest and greatest 
men in England, that wish me well, about bargaining with 
the Crown for my government. They all say, "Stay 
awhile, be not hasty"; yet some incline to a good bargain: 
and to let Quarry begone, and change him to another prov- 
ince, if we can do no better. Perry and the Lords of Trade 
have talked of our being Friends. Pray, mind my direc- 
tions in former letters, and make return with A\ speed, or 
I 'm undone. 

To this letter Logan replied, under date of "Philadel- 
phia, 17th, 7 mo., 1702" (September 17th) : 

297 



WILLIAM PENN 

We are sensible of thy great exigencies for want of suffi- 
cient supplies there, but I can see no better way to remedy 
it than those I am upon, when thy son arrives he will be 
a witness of our circumstances, and that I pretend nothing 
for the sake of excuse, but what we too feelingly experience 
to be true. Wheat, that when thou left us, was our best 
commodity, goes now begging from door to door and can 
rarely find a buyer. The cheapness of grain in England, 
allowing provisions from thence at much easier rates than 
our country will yet afford it. So that very few vessels 
have gone out this fall, which used to be the busiest time, 
and even these were long before freighted, and that, not 
fully. The merchants thus forbearing to buy, the country 
can get no money. Wheat, they offer in pay, but for that 
there is no vent, nor indeed are the merchants much better 
supplied. They buy goods of the vessels at 150 per cent, 
but how they will be paid, none can foresee — unless corn 
rise in England or a peace (which is not likely) open to us 
the Spanish trade. 

This province seems in danger of being brought to an 
ebb. . . . 

I can not advise against a bargain with the Crown, if to 
be had on good terms for thyself and the people. Friends 
here, at least the generality of the best informed, think gov- 
ernment at this time so ill fitted to their principles, that it 
renders them very indiff'erent in that point, further than 
that they earnestly desire thy success in vindicating the 
country's reputation, and that they may not fall a spoil to 
such base hands as now seek our ruin. Privileges, they 
believe, such as might be depended on for a continuance 
both to thee and them, with a moderate governor, would 
set thee much more at ease, and give thee an happier life 
as Proprietor only, than thou hast yet had as Governor; 
besides, that it would exempt thee from the solicitude they 

298 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

are under, both from their own impotence and the malicious 
watchfulness of enemies. 

To this Penn rejoins under date of "London, 24th of 12 
month, 1702" (Christian Calendar, February 24, 1703) : 

I never was so low and so reduced. For Ireland, my 
old principal verb, has hardly any money. England — se- 
vere to her — no trade but hither — and at England's mercy 
for prices, (save butter and meat to Flanders and the West 
Indies) that we must go and eat out half our rents or we 
can not enjoy them. 

I have great interest, as well as my son's settlement to 
deduct, with three or four per cent tax here and twenty 
or twenty-six per cent exchange from Ireland to England, 
to answer. I therefore earnestly urge supplies, and by the 
best methods, and least hazardous. . . . 

I know thy ability, I doubt not thy integrity, I desire 
thy application and health, and above all, thy growth in 
the feeling of the power of Truth; for that fits and helps 
us above all other things, even in business of this world; 
clearing our heads, quickening our spirits, and giving us 
faith and courage to perform. 

I am sorry to find by thine, thou art so much oppressed 
in thy station, and wish I could make it lighter. If my 
son will apply himself to business, he may, by the authority 
of his relationship, &c., render the post easier to thee. I 
know the baseness of the temper of too many of the people 
thou hast to deal with, which calls for judgment and great 
temper, with some authority. This year the customs upon 
goods from Pennsylvania amount to £8,000. The year I 
arrived there, 1699, but to £1,500, at the most. A good 
argument for me and the poor country. It has a greater 
regard here, and made the care of an officer, (as well as 

299 



WILLIAM PENN 

Virginia and Maryland) at the custom house. New York 
not the half of it. 

But oh! that we had a fur trade instead of a tobacco 
one, and that thou didst do all that is possible to master 
furs and skins for me, they bear more, especially such as 
thou sent me. 

Had I but two or three chests of them, I could have 
sold them for almost what I would ; 16, aye, 20 shillings a 
skin, at this juncture. . . . 

The gentleman who brings this (Judge Mompesson) is 
constituted Judge of the Admiralty of Pennsylvania, the 
Jerseys, and New York, and is yet willing to be roif Attor- 
ney-General to rectify matters in law, and to put you into 
better methods, in which respect he is thought by the Judi- 
ciary here to be very able. Get him a sober, suitable house 
to diet in, as well as lodge. If you were together, 'twere 
to thy advantage in many respects. He is a moderate 
churchman, knows the world here, has been in two several 
Parliaments, and Recorder of Southampton — only steps 
abroad to ease his fortune of some of his father's debts he 
was early unwarily engaged for. He is a favorite of Lord 
Cornbury's father, the Earl of Clarendon. 

I have granted him a commission for Chief Justice, in 
case the people will lay hold of such an opportunity as no 
government in America ever had before of an English law- 
yer, and encourage him by a proper salary of at least £100, 
if not £150 per annum. 

My son (having life) resolves to be with you per first 
opportunity ; his wife, this day week, was delivered of a fine 
boy, which he calls William. So that now we are major, 
minor, and minimus. I bless the Lord mine are pretty well. 
Jolinne lively, Tommy a lovely, large child, and my grand- 
son, Springett, a mere Saracen, his sister a beauty. . . . 

I have sent some hats, one for Griffith Owen, and the 
other intended for Edward Shippen, which thou mayst 

300 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

take, with this just excuse, that the brim being too narrow 
for his age and height, I intend him one with a larger brim ; 
for as soon as I saw it, I tokl the Friend who made it, I 
thought it handsome, though I pinch here to be sure. If 
my son sends hounds, as he has provided two or three couple 
of choice ones for deer, foxes, and wolves, pray let great 
care be taken of them. 

In the foregoing letter we see Penn's habit, common 
to all his correspondence, of mixing up state. Church, and 
family in the most charmingly patriarchal confusion. This 
is chiefly interesting as an index of his random mental 
habit, his tendency to think, or try to think, of many things 
at the same time, and his apparent inability to draw much, 
if any, distinction between public and private affairs. He 
seems to have considered his own life, private as well as 
public, an open book, which "he who runs might read." 
At any rate, he was always ready to take the whole world 
into his confidence, apparently so conscientious in self- 
assurance of right, probity, and honor on his own side 
that he cared nothing for any other point of view. It was 
a singular manifestation of the Ego, as metaphysicians 
say, and yet, though his career and character have been 
under close scrutiny and often subjected to malevolent in- 
vestigation during two centuries, nothing has been found 
to indicate that he could not submit his private affairs to 
the public gaze with impunity. 

But, irreproachable as William Penn's life may have 
been in the sense of freedom from wrong or scandal, he was 
no stranger to the arts of diplomacy. We have already 
shown that when, during his second visit to Pennsylvania 

301 



WILLIAM PENN 

(1G99-1701), the King wrote to him, as to other colonial 
governors, requesting that defensive measures be taken, he 
evaded the responsibility of personally indorsing the King's 
requirement before the assembly. Though that body, by 
resolution, requested him to lay the King's letter before 
them with a written message embodying his own views and 
advice in the premises, he adroitly avoided the issue by 
orally requesting the assembly to consider and act upon the 
King's letter as it stood, and declined to assume any per- 
sonal attitude whatever, pro or con. 

In 1703, after the death of King William, the same ques- 
tion came up and confronted James Logan, who was man- 
aging the affairs of the province pending the arrival of 
Governor Evans. Logan believed that the colony ought 
to defend itself. But he, too, was unwilling to assume the 
responsibility of advocating such a policy openly. There- 
fore, when the question confronted him in 1703, he re- 
ferred it to Penn in the following letter, dated September 
2, 1703: 

By last post we have accounts from N. England that 
the French and Indians, joining to the eastward, have cut 
off several settlements, and killed and carried away 150 
persons, a sore unexpected blow. The Governor having, 
even this summer, made peace by a solemn treaty with those 
very savages who have been chiefly concerned in the mis- 
chief. They are at open war with them now, having pro- 
claimed it at Boston al)Out fifteen days ago. The French 
have likewise settled among the Five Nations not at peace 
with them, and have their emissaries everywhere, those of 
Connecticut are also like to break with the English, as let- 
ters by the same post inform us. Indian Harry of Cones- 

302 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

toga, is now here, and informs lis of the great endeavors of 
the French, but I have not yet fully discoursed with him. I 
wish thee could find more to say for our lying so naked and 
defenseless. I always used the best argument I could, and 
when I pleaded that we were a peaceable people, had wholly 
renounced war and the spirit of it, that we were willing 
to commit ourselves to the protection of God alone, in an 
assurance that the sw^ord can neither be drawn nor sheathed, 
but by his direction ; that the desolation made by it, are the 
declaration of his wrath alone ; that the Christian dispensa- 
tion is exclusively of peace on earth and good-will towards 
men ; and that those who will not use the sword, but by an 
entire resignation commit themselves to his all-powerful 
providence, shall never need it, but be safe under a more 
sure defense than any worldly arm. When I pleaded this, 
I really spoke my sentiments, but this will not answer in 
English government, nor the methods of this region. Their 
answer is, that should we lose our lives only, it would be 
little to the crown, seeing it is our doing, but others are 
involved with us, and should the enemy make themselves 
masters of the country, it would too sensibly touch England 
in the rest of her colonies. 

Manifestly, no more pointed request for the assumption 
by Penn of the personal responsibility that belonged to him 
could be framed. But he evaded it. On December 30, 1703, 
he wrote a reply to Logan's letter, just quoted, without the 
slightest mention of the subject of defense. Under the 
same date he wrote voluminous instructions to the council, 
in which he treats clearly and exhaustively of every subject 
before them except that of defense, concerning which his 
silence is profound. But he closes his instructions to the 
council as follows: 

303 



WILLIAM PENN 

I shall conclude when I have said I expect from you 
that you will maintain my just rights and privileges, both 
in government and property, granted to me by King Charles 
II, under the Great Seal of England, and by James, Duke 
of York, his Royal brother, and the constitution, laws, and 
customs, unitedly and universally signed and established in 
that government long before the coming of those troubles 
of our race amongst us ; for you can not think that I shall 
support them here, if you submit them there to the unjust, 
clamorous, and insolent practises of those notorious enemies 
to our public peace. 

It has been observed in a previous chapter that the cause 
of all Penn's troubles, so far as concerned the relations of 
his colony to the home Government, was the stubborn re- 
fusal of the Quakers to defend themselves. At the end it 
was one cause of the destruction of his government by the 
Continental Congress acting through the "supreme execu- 
tive council" in 1776. 

He certainly must have had views of his o^vn on the 
subject. More than once a crisis occurred at which both 
the home Government and his own subordinates were enti- 
tled to know where he stood. But he made no sign. In 
any one else, situated as he was, such silence would have 
been construed to indicate a want of moral courage. What 
was it in William Penn? 

The correspondence was closely maintained without any 
other development of historical importance until the "5th 
mo. 1704," when Logan writes a long letter detailing the 
factious proceedings of the assembly, the "pernicious 
activity" — as President Cleveland might have said — of 
David Lloyd, the unreasonable notions of the people eon- 

304 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

cerning the use tliey ought to make of the privileges they 
already have and certain additional immunities to which 
they think themselves entitled. Logan concludes this let- 
ter as follows : 

I am at wit's end here. Since thou provided for them 
[the Quakers] an asylum where they may breathe free air 
and worship without fear of constables or risk of jail, their 
spirits rise to most exorbitant expectations and demands of 
further enfranchisement. 

This people think privileges their due, and all that can 
be grasped their native right ; but when dispensed with too 
liberal a hand, as not restraining licentiousness, may pro- 
duce their greatest unhappiness. Charters here are in dan- 
ger of consequences more fatal according as they are lib- 
eral; for some people's brains are as soon intoxicated with 
power as the Indians are with their beloved liquor, and as 
little to be trusted with it ! ... A well-tempered mixture 
in government is the happiest, the greatest liberty and 
surest property; and Commonwealth's men, being invested 
with power, have been known to become the greatest 
tyrants. 

This letter was followed by another dated October 3, 
1704, in which Logan informs Penn that 

The people, getting advice of negotiation to sell [the pro- 
prietary] are alarmed lest some denial of privilege may 
befall them and the province carried loose from its safe 
foundation in equal rights of all. They lay siege to me for 
news and hopes. I can but say I know only what thou 
sendest, but am sure thy care will protect them in all things 
worthy of protection or for their real good. . . . 

The part thou hast hitherto had to manage in the world, 
will not suffer thee with any honor utterly to desert this 
21 305 



WILLIAM PENN 

people ; and on the other side, I can not see why thou should 
neglect thy own interest, while no more gratitude is shown 
thee. Were one * man from among us, we might, perhaps, 
be happy, but he is truly a promoter of discord; with the 
deepest artifice, under the smoothest language and pre- 
tenses, yet can not sometimes conceal his resentment of thy 
taking (as he calls it) his bread from him. This expres- 
sion he has several times dropped, overlooking his politics, 
through the heat of his indignation. In reflecting upon 
this subject, I can not but pity the poor misled people, who 
really design honestly, but know not whom to trust for their 
directors; they are so often told that things w^aut to be 
mended, that at length they are persuaded it is the case, 
and not knowing how to set about it themselves, believe that 
those who can discover the disease are the most capable to 
direct the proper remedies : how ends may be gained thus, 
is easy to imagine. 

I have a tenderness in my own thoughts for the people, 
but can not but abhor the appearance of baseness ; I believe 
in the whole Assembly, there are not three men that wish 
ill to thee, and yet I can expect but little good from them. 
Thy friends in the Council are disabled from serving thee 
with the country by their being so, for they are looked on 
as ill here as the court party at home, by those that some 
reckon the honest men of the country. I am sorry we have 
lost, this election, two or three good men that were in the 
last, as Samuel Richardson and Nicholas Wain, who is now 
pretty right, but especially my late landlord Isaac Norris, 
who was the chief man of sound sense and probity amongst 
them, and the greatest clog in their way. 

I have never been under a greater depression of thought 
than for these few months past : Thy estates here daily sink- 
ing by the country's impoverishment, with thy exigencies 

* David Lloyd, of course. 
306 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

incroasino;, suffer me not to know what any of the comforts 
of life are. 

To this Penn responds under date three months later : 

As difficult as my circumstances are, and as mean a 
prospect as thou givest me of any supply, yet that hardly 
troubles me equal to the weakness, and worse, (I fear) of 
some of our folks in reference to your government matters. 
If, at a time when monarchs on this side the world, who 
will yet for some ages give law to that, seem almost of a 
mind to get as nuich power in their hands as they can, the 
people think such a law as thine mentions can succeed here, 
they are distracted, if not worse, for to say truth 'tis incon- 
gruous, and a mere bull in constitution as the case stands. 
They will leave no government for me to dispose of, but 
take it upon themselves, and neither acquit me for a Deputy- 
Governor these twenty-three years at my cost, nor so much 
as settle a maintenance upon this gentleman. By no means 
let the present Governor recommend himself to the Queen 
or me, to succeed in the government at so preposterous a 
rate. Will they never be wise? These Assemblies held so 
unwisely, as well as so hazardously, will, in the end, subject 
the whole to laws made for them in Parliament. 

I am sorry to have such a prospect of charges ; two houses 
and the Governor's salary, my son's voyage, stay and re- 
turn ; and no revenue nor Susquehannah money paid ; on 
which account I ventured my poor child so far from his 
wife and pretty children, and my own oversight. Penn- 
sylvania, what hast thou not cost me! Above £30,000 more 
than I ever got by it, two hazardous and most fatiguing 
voyages, my straits and slavery here, and my child's soul 
almost; as I have formerly expi-essed myself, but I must 
be short, — I shall be further loaded, instead of his coming 
being instrumental to relieve me. In short I must sell 
all or be undone, and disgraced into the bargain. 

307 



WILLIAM PENN 

Soon after this, under date of "London, 16th of 11th 
mo. 1704" (January 16, 1705), Penn resumes the subject 
of sale : 

Now, for the government, depend upon it I shall speed- 
ily part with it; and had I not given that Charter [the 
amended Charter of 1701] and got but £400 per annum 
fixed for Governor, and not made such good conditions for 
them, I had twice as much as I am now likely to get. If 
I don't dissolve it, the Queen will. [Meaning the amended 
Charter.] 

In another letter, written a few days after the fore- 
going, but sent in the same packet, Penn offers a sort of 
ultimatum : 

In short, upon my knowledge of the conclusion of this 
winter's Assembly, I shall take my last measure. When 
the prosperity that attends the country is talked of, and 
what they have done for me, or allowed my deputies, that 
have supported them against their neighbor's envy, and 
church attempts here, and there, [people] seem struck with 
admiration [wonder] ; and must either think me an ill man, 
or they an ungrateful people. That which I expected was, 
£300 or £400 per annum for the Governor, and to raise for 
other charges, as they saw occasion. And if they will not 
do this willingly, they may find they must give a great deal 
more, whether they please or not, [under a royal govern- 
ment.] I only, by my interest, have prevented a scheme 
drawn up to new model the colonies. I was told so by a 
duke, and a minister, too. 

For, indeed, if our folks had settled a reasonable revenue, 
I would have returned, to settle a Queen's government and 
the people together, and laid my bones with them; for the 

308 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

country is as pleasant to me as ever. And if my wife's 
mother should die, who is now very ill, I believe not only 
my wife and our young stoek, but her father, too, would 
incline thither — who has been a treasure to Bristol, and 
given his whole time to the service of the poor; Friends 
first, (till they made eight per cent of their money,) and 
next the city poor, by act of Parliament, where he has been 
kept in beyond forms. He has so managed to their advan- 
tage, that the Bristol members [of Parliament] gave our 
Friends, and my father-in-law in particular, an encomium 
much to their honor, in the House. . . . 

I can hardly be brought to turn my back entirely upon 
a place the Lord so specially brought to my hand, and has 
hitherto preserved against the proud swellings of many 
waters, both there and here. My surrender is before the 
lords, a copy of which, and conditions, as also the report 
of the Attorney-General — as to the thirty-seven laws he 
excepts against, I send now that you may obviate them be- 
fore refused by the Queen ; the rest shall be confirmed — I 
can do no more ; and what with the load of unworthy spirits 
with you, and some not much better here, with my poor 
son's going into the army or navy, as well as getting into 
Parliament, through so many checks and tests upon his 
morals as well as education ; with the load of debt, hardly 
to be answered, from the dil^culty of getting in what I have 
a right to, of twice their value, which is starving in the 
midst of bread ; my head and heart are filled sufificiently 
with trouble; yet the Lord holds up my head, and Job's 
overrighteous and mistaken friends have not sunk my soul 
from its confidence in God. 



On February 17, 1705, Penn appoints Roger Morapes- 
son Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, and in the letter ac- 
companying the commission he says: 

309 



WILLIAM PENN 

I went to Pennsylvania to found a free colony for all 
mankind of any nation, belief or circumstance that should 
go thither, more especially those of my own profession. Not 
that I would lessen the civil liberties of others, because of 
their persuasion, but screen and defend our own from any 
infringement on that account. The charter I granted, was 
intended to shelter them against a violent or arbitrary gov- 
ernment, imposed upon us; but that they should turn it 
against me, that intended their security thereby, has some- 
thing very unworthy and provoking in it; especially, when 
I alone have been at all the charge, as well as danger and 
disappointment, in coming so abruptly back and defending 
ourselves against our enemies here, and obtaining the 
Queen's gracious approbation of a Governor of my nom- 
inating and commissioning — the thing they seemed so much 
to desire. 

But as a father does not use to knock his children on 
the head, when they do amiss, so I had much rather they 
were corrected and better informed, than treated to the 
utmost rigor of their deservings. I, therefore, earnestly 
desire thee to consider of what methods law and reason will 
justify, by which they may be made sensible of their en- 
croachments and presumption ; that they may see them- 
selves in a true light, in their just proportions and dimen- 
sions, according to the old saying, Metiri se qiiemquc suo 
modulo ac pcde, verum est. 

No doubt these follies have been frequent and big 
enough to vacate their charter, but that should be the last 
thing, if anything else would do. I would hope — that in 
the abuse of power- — punishing the immoderate offenders, 
should instruct them to use it well. . . . 

There is an excess of vanity that is apt to creep upon 
the people in power in America, who having got out of 
the crowd, in which they were lost here, upon every little 
eminency there, think nothing taller than themselves but 

310 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

the trees; and as if there was no after superior judgment 
to which they should be accountable. So that I have some- 
times thought, that if there was a law to oblige people in 
power, in their respective colonies, to take turns in coming 
over to England, that they might lose themselves again 
amongst the crowds of so much more considerable people, 
at the Custom House, Exchange, and Westminster Hall, 
they would exceedingly amend in their conduct at their 
return, and be more discreet and tractable, and fit for gov- 
ernment. 

In the meantime pray help them not to destroy them- 
selves. Accept of my commission of Chief Justice of Penn- 
sylvania and the territories ; — take them all to task for their 
contempts, presumption, and riots; — let them know and 
feel the just order and economy of government, and that 
they are not to command, but to be commanded, according 
to law and constitution of the English government. And, 
'till those unworthy people that hindered an establishment 
upon thee, as their Chief Justice, are amended, or laid 
aside, so as that thou art considered by law to thy satisfac- 
tion; I freely allow the £20 at each session; which I take 
to be, at spring and fall ; and at any extraordinary session 
thou mayst be called from New York, upon mine, or 
weighty causes; having also thy viaticum discharged. 

After this Penn seems to have waited for developments. 
On September 14, 1705,* he answers a cheerful letter from 
Logan as follows : 

Thy letter of the 11th of 12th mo. contains four points. 
First, the late quiet state of government amongst you. 
Could I promise myself the continuance thereof, I should 

* For the convenience of the reader we shall henceforth translate the 
dates of this correspondence into the language of the Christian calendar, 

311 



WILLIAM PENN 

be induced never to part with it. The surrender is not 
yet effected, nor do I know when it will. . . . 

I am well pleased with the Governor's speech, and as 
little pleased with the Assembly's answer. I have not yet 
surrendered, and unless I can do it upon very valuable 
terms, I will not ; and, therefore, expect three things : 1st. 
The condemnation of David Lloyd's proceedings, as thou 
speakest of, and that, whether I surrender or not. Since 
one or t'other shall make no difference as to my coming 
and inhabiting there, and placing some of my children 
among them. 2dly. That no law be passed, nor privilege 
granted, by my Lieutenant-Governor, till they have settled 
a revenue of £1000 per annum upon the government, at 
least. I, too, mournfully remember how noble a law I had, 
of exports and imports, when I was first in America, that 
had been worth, by this time, some thousands a year; 
which I suspended receiving for a year or two, and that 
not without consideration engaged by several merchants. 

But T. [Thomas] Lloyd, very unhappily for me, my 
family, and himself, complimented some few selfish spirits 
with the repeal thereof, without my final consent, which 
his commission required. And that has been the source 
of all my loads and inabilities to support myself under the 
troubles that have occurred to me on account of settling 
and maintaining that colony. For I spent upon it £10,000 
the first two years, as appears by accounts here in England, 
which, with £3000 I overspent myself in King James's time, 
and the war in Ireland that followed, has been the true 
cause of all my straits I have since labored under ; and no 
supply coming from Pennsylvania between my first and 
second voyage, (being 15 years,) to alleviate my burdens 
and answer my necessities; — to say nothing of what my 
Deputy-Governors have lost me, from the beginning, even 
in Fletcher 's time, and the vast sum of money I have melted 
away here in London, to hinder much mischief against us, 

312 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

if not to do us much good — which I can solemnly say has 
not been less, communihus annis, than £400 a year, which 
comes to near £10,000. 

Lord Baltimore's two shillings per hhd., with anchor- 
age, tonnage, and other immunities, is a supply far tran- 
scending what I can hope for, though he never took the 
hundredth part of the concern upon him that I have done : 
and when they gave it to him, they were in poorer cir- 
cumstances than Pennsylvania is now, by many degrees. 
And I am ashamed to tell thee how approbriously our 
people's treatment of me has been styled by people of 
almost all qualities and stations. . . . 

I do again a little complain of thee, to thee : for thou 
hast shifted thy judgment about selling the government. 
One time sell it with all speed, and another time keep it. 
One time sell all ; perplexities in property staring us in the 
face, as well as those in government ; another time, govern- 
ment only, and go thither and enjoy myself quietly, in the 
evening of my time, with my family and friends, and it 
would much advance my property. And thou advisest me 
to sell government, and the millions of rough lands remain- 
ing — Tjeing about thirty millions of acres, unless the lakes 
divide me. Now the opinion I have of thy abilities, (as is 
well known to our secretaries and great men here,) makes 
me stagger under diversity of directions. I know also thou 
hast two or three good heads in thy intimacy, and, that I 
make myself believe, love me and wish me well, that are 
good assistants to thee ; and I wish I had your solemn final 
resolve what I shall do. 

The foregoing excerpts may serve to exliibit the scope 
and tenor of all the official correspondence between the Pro- 
prietary and his subordinates from 1702 to 1708. The parts 
reproduced form only a small fraction of the whole. For 

313 



WILLIAM PENN 

the rest the subjects are mainly religion, the behavior of 
young William Penn, the care of Pennsbury Manor, the 
family affairs of his particular friends in the colony, in- 
cluding several instances of patriarchal advices on such 
subjects as the marriage of some friend's daughter or selec- 
tion of a trade for the son of some other friend, and fre- 
quent injunctions as to dealing with the Indians. 

It is, we think, difficult to resist the impression that 
Penn had during these years an ulterior purpose in his 
tentative and protracted bargaining with the Queen's 
officers for the sale of his Proprietary. There never was 
a time during the whole seven years inclusive when the deal 
could not have been closed in a week had Penn been suffi- 
ciently in earnest to relax the extraordinary and, in some 
respects, absurd terms he steadily proposed, not only on 
his own behalf but on that of " Friends. These special 
terms were quite at variance with the oft and loudly pro- 
claimed doctrine of universal equality; but his excuse for 
them was that transfer of control to the Crown might re- 
sult in ascendency of the Church of England in the prov- 
ince, and with it ostracism and even political disfran- 
chisement of the Quakers similar to that then prevailing 
not only in England but in most of the American colo- 
nies themselves. 

However, the real or main purpose of this dawdling 
policy, though thinly disguised, clearly seems to have been 
the use of the negotiations as a threat held over the provin- 
cial government in the hope of forcing or frightening its 
discordant factions into good or endurable behavior. In 
this he was partially successful. Evans imdoubtedly used 

314 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

the threat with telling effect iu the campaign of 1705, 
which resulted in the defeat of David Lloyd's faction in 
the assembly and temporary retirement of that indefati- 
gable boss to his farm at Chester. 

It also seems clear that by the year 1708 Penn had 
begun to realize that his plan of government was a failure, 
and that, whatever may have been his motive in opening 
negotiations for the sale of his Proprietary to the Crown in 
1703, he began to take a serious view of it in 1708 or 1709. 
At that time the pressure of debt and the loss of other re- 
sources forced him to view his colony as a source of revenue. 
His tenants would not pay the quit-rents, and to compel 
them by distraint would disclose a weakness in his system 
which, for obvious reasons, it was his policy to conceal. 
That weakness was his inability to enforce his own laws. 
With this fatal defect once officially exposed the officers of 
the Crown would naturally inquire why they should buy 
something that did not exist ; why they should pay a price 
for a ''government" that did not govern; and, in logical 
sequence, why they should not take it, as King William 
already had done, temporarily, by force ? The only chance 
he had of realizing on his Proprietary was by sale outright, 
and he must effect the bargain before the patience of the 
home Government should be wholly exhausted. And, from 
1708- '09 till his mind gave way in 1712, that was his 
real aim. 

At the very outset, however, of these earnest negotia- 
tions a new and unexpected misfortune overtook him. In 
order that this event may be clearly understood and its 
effect upon his already weaning fortunes fully comprehended, 

315 



WILLIAM PENN 

it is necessary to say that, in 1689, he appointed Philip Ford 
steward of his personal estates in the province, vice James 
Harrison, who had held the position from 1681. Lest some 
might charge us with bias or prejudice, we will let another 
writer, a Quaker, describe Ford and the means through 
which he found the way to the confidence of William Penn. 
We quote from the Pemberton MSS. (see also Janney, pp. 
499 et seq.): 

Philip Ford was a man of respectable standing ; a mem- 
ber of the Society of Friends and much esteemed by Penn, 
who employed him in the management of his estates, placing 
implicit confidence in his integrity and accepting his ac- 
counts without scrutiny. In a letter to Thomas Lloyd and 
others (five members of the Council) dated December — , 
1685, he thus speaks of Ford, who was one of the first buy- 
ers of land in Pennsylvania, though residing in England: 
"I would have you forthwith take care and order Philip 
Ford's city lot for his ten thousand acres and his hundred 
and fifty acres to be laid out the very next of all that is not 
taken up, for he deserves of the whole country to be pre- 
ferred, for the good of it has neglected the advancement of 
his own." 

Ford died in 1705, leaving to his heirs certain alleged 
claims against Penn, These claims were made up of un- 
reasonable connnissions charged upon large transactions that 
had passed through his hands for many years, and of certain 
advances on which he calculated compound interest every 
six months at eight per cent (the law allowing only six per 
cent). By such means, though he had received from Penn 
or his estates £17,000 and could show vouchers for expendi- 
ture of only £16,200 in his behalf, he brought the Proprie- 
tary in his debt to the amount of £10,500. 

316 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

Penn had passed Ford 's accounts from time to time with- 
out sufficient examination, and finally, to secure the debt, 
gave Ford a lien upon the Proprietary in the form of what 
would in these days be called a "cutthroat mortgage." In 
that shape Penn let the affair rest until, when Ford died, his 
widow and son, Philip Ford, Jr., instituted foreclosure pro- 
ceedings. 

When Penn was advised of these facts he wrote to James 
Logan under date of December 28, 1705 : 

I offered upon the adjusting the accounts, (against which 
I have great and equitable exceptions,) that the half should 
be then presently paid, and the other reasonably secured; 
and that, as I desired not to be a judge in my own case, I 
did propose to refer it to Friends of their and my own 
choosing. Both which, (after three years agitation,) they 
refused. On which, I complained to the meeting they be- 
longed unto; and had it not been for the young man's late 
illness, which hindered their attendance on the meeting, that 
adjourned from week to week, mostly on that account, they 
had been disowned by the meeting, or had stopped their 
proceedings in chancery. Those people have been very dil- 
atory, false, and changeable, as well as insolent and unman- 
nerly ; and their strength is not their cause, but their abet- 
tors — some of the worst among you, and of such here as have 
long laid a design to supplant both me and mine. I hope 
the Lord will disappoint them, to their shame. 

The reason why they will not refer their case, is supposed 
to be the blackness and injustice of the account, which by 
chancery they hope to stifle, and have the oppressive sum 
allowed, being upon security. But my counsel, (esteemed 
the top of that court,) assures me otherwise; and then, their 
£12,000 pretense must bear a considerable abatement ; whose 

317 



WILLIAM PENN 

accoiints, though so vohiminoiis, have been, through Provi- 
dence, rather than by my carefulness, preserved entire; 
having never opened them since the family delivered them 
sealed to me, 'till on this occasion. 

Some of the exceptions thereunto are these : First, He 
received more moneys of mine than ever he paid for me, as 
appears from the account enclosed. Second, That the pre- 
tended sum amounts to that height by an unreasonable and 
voracious computation of compound interest every six 
months (sometimes sooner,) at six, but oftener at eight per 
cent. Third, The unusual and extravagant sum he sets down 
as salary money, for paying himself out of my money — and 
21/^ per cent for money advanced, when the custom here is 
but 1/2 per cent. Fourth, That he did not set down any of 
the times on which he received £8,000 of my money, whereby 
one might bring the account to a balance — but continued the 
first sum advanced, which was £2,800, and the compound in- 
terest thereof, reckoned every six months; with other de- 
mands, as aforesaid. There are many things more which I 
can not insert, by reason of the shortness of time. 

Friends' letter, with many subscriptions [signatures] is 
come to hand. My dear love to them all, and let none be 
concerned about the lands they purchased, either before or 
since my last being among you, for care was taken therein : 
and let them know, that I neither have, nor willingly shall 
surrender, since they desire I should not. 

The widow Ford, however, did not adopt Penn's view of 
the case, but brought suit, with David Lloyd for counsel in 
the province and Sir Simon Harcourt in England. This 
lawsuit dragged along until November, 1707, when a judg- 
ment was rendered against Penn for £3,000, including costs 
in one of three separate cases, and an appeal was taken 
to the High Court of Chancery. Penn refused to give the 

318 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

double security required and was put in Fleet Prison. Isaac 
Norris (then in England) describes this event in a letter to 
James Logan as follows, under date of January 10, 1708 : 

Governor Penn was, last fourth day, arrested at Grace 
Church street meeting, by order of Philip Ford, on an exe- 
cution on the special verdict for about £3,000 rent. He has, 
by the advice of all his best friends, turned himself over 
to the Fleet. I was to see him last night, at his new lodgings 
in the Old Bailey. He is cheery, and will bear it well ; and, 
'tis thought, no better way to bring them to terms. At some, 
there are hopes of a composition ; at other times, they appear 
cold and hardened : so that there is no judgment beforehand 
how it will terminate. I have taken some pains, and some- 
times seem to have an interest with them ; but when they get 
with their lawyers all is blown. 

This act of theirs, with the aggravation of dogging to a 
meeting, makes a great noise everywhere, but especially 
among Friends; and people, who had not troubled them- 
selves before, now appear warm, and I hope still a good 
issue. 

The Proprietary Governor of Pennsylvania lay in the 
debtors ' prison nine months and eleven days, from January 
7 to October 18, 1708. Isaac Norris visited him occasionally. 
Under date of March 6, 1708, he writes to James Logan : 

Our Proprietor and Governor is still in the Fleet [Fleet 
Prison] . Good lodgings ; has meetings there, is often visited 
and lives comfortably enough for the circumstances. He 
has freedom of the garden and all in charge are kind to him. 
His health though, I fear, may suffer not alone from confine- 
ment, but from the total of his burdens on every hand. 

Meantime Norris, Thomas Callowhill, and others be- 
stirred themselves, both in England and in Pennsylvania, 

319 



WILLIAM PENN 

to effect a compromise with the Fords and also to raise the 
money necessary for their satisfaction. After many con- 
ferences and much squabbling, the widow agreed to accept 
£7,500 in full of all claims of the Ford estate against Penn. 
That amount was soon raised by subscription, about £3,000 
in England and the rest in Pennsylvania. The fund was 
placed in the hands of trustees, to whom Penn executed a 
mortgage on the Proprietary and his personal estates, pay- 
able in nine years at six per cent interest, compounded an- 
nually, to be divided when paid pro rata among the sub- 
scribers. Among the largest subscribers to this fund was 
Joshua Carpenter, who but a short time before had resisted 
collection of the quit-rent and made a test case at law, as 
stated in a previous chapter. 

For the first six months Penn bore up well. His confine- 
ment w^as by no means rigorous, and he was allowed every 
privilege but that of egress from the prison. In the last 
three months, however, his health began to fail. He became 
despondent and frequently brooded over the wrongs that 
had been visited upon him by those he most implicitly 
trusted. He could not comprehend how any man could be 
devout as Philip Ford was in religious profession and ob- 
servance and at the same time so rapacious and unprincipled 
in worldly affairs. He knew that the outside world, both 
in England and America, viewed the whole aft'air as a case 
of "Quaker eat Quaker," and bestowed little sympathy on 
the victim. His letters to Logan, Norris, and others, while 
the case was pending, indicate that he more keenly felt the 
scandal and opprobrium it cast upon Quakerism than the 
wrong done to himself. 

320 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

When released from Fleet Prison he was quite ill and 
barely able to endure the journey to his home at Brentford, 
only nine miles distant, and on arrival there he was pros- 
trated several weeks. His malady is described in the old 
letters as ' ' a dropsical gout, with swelling of the lower legs 
and feet, much lassitude and feebleness of mind as well as 
of body at times." 

From this he rallied about the beginning of the year 
1710 and resumed control of his affairs. lie also removed 
from Brentford to a country-seat called Ruscombe, in the 
Berkshire Hills, where he passed the remainder of his life. 

He now resumed negotiations for the sale of his Proprie- 
tary. These operations dragged slowly along, the delay being 
caused by his determined adherence to certain conditions 
which the officers of the Crown would not accept. These 
conditions were partly based upon material considerations 
and partly upon principle. On the material considerations 
he was willing to yield somewhat. For example, he began 
by demanding that one-tenth of the lands embraced in the 
grant of Charles II should be considered his personal estate 
in fee under the Crown the same as under his Proprietary. 
This the Queen's officers would not admit. They would 
only agree that he should hold in fee such lands as had 
already been actually taken up by him for his own use or as 
estates for his children. On this point he yielded early in 
the year 1712, or rather he agreed to a compromise by virtue 
of which he and his family were to have about 800,000 acres 
in fee under the Crown, in lieu of all other rights under 
the original grant, including arrears of quit-rents, the rest 
reverting to the Crown. 

22 321 



WILLIAM PENN 

On the considerations we have described as matters of 
principle he was inflexible. They were, in the main, stipula- 
tions that there should be no Establishment of the Church 
of England in the province and no use of public money for 
sectarian benefit; that there should be no abridgment or 
qualification of suffrage or test of eligibility to office within 
the province; and the implied right of Parliament to tax 
the colony reserved in the original charter should be con- 
strued, as it hitherto had been, to involve only indirect taxes, 
such as duties on imports, and not to include direct taxation 
upon property or income. 

Finally, after nearly two years of debate, the officers 
of the Crown yielded all these points of principle and a 
new charter or constitution was drawn. It was modeled 
in most respects after those of New York and New Jersey, 
except that the Church clause was omitted and the question 
of suffrage left to be determined by the people of the 
province. 

During this period, when all hope of success along his 
original lines had been abandoned and Penn was struggling 
to save as much as he could from the wreck — or what he 
considered the wreck — of his Proprietary, his patience must 
have been something more than human to have kept at least 
some trace of bitterness from his soul. His patience was, 
indeed, wonderful, almost miraculous; but the ingratitude 
of those whose fortunes he had made and the reeking selfish- 
ness of those for whom he had created an asylum of freedom 
and prosperity at last wounded him beyond endurance. 

By the middle of the year 1710 he could see his way 
clear. The eventual sale of the Proprietary was assured. 

322 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

He then addressed a letter to the people of the province 
at large through the president of the council, Edward Ship- 
pen. This was a remarkable production, in most respects 
the ablest state paper to be found in the entire collection of 
his writings. Its tenor was plaintive rather than condemna- 
tory, but it set forth with greater force than condemnation 
could the neglect, the wrongs, and the ingratitude that his 
colony in general and his own sect in particular had visited 
upon him in return for his benefices. The letter is dated 
'^London, June 29, 1710," and it is addressed to ''My Old 
Friends." (Selected Writings, pp. 515 et seq., Friends' 
Library) : 

It is a mournful consideration and a cause of deep afflic- 
tion to me that I am forced by the oppressions and disap- 
pointments that have fallen to my share in this life to speak 
to the people of that province in a language I once hoped I 
should never have occasion to use. But the many troubles 
and oppositions I have met with from thence oblige me in 
plainness and freedom to expostulate with you concerning 
the causes of them. . . . For this reason I must desire you 
all, even of all professions and degrees (for, although all 
have not been engaged in the measures and actions that have 
been taken, yet every man who has interest there is, or must 
be, concerned in them by their effects), I must therefore, I 
say, desire you all, in a serious and true weightiness of mind, 
to consider what you are, or have been doing ; why matters 
must be carried on with these divisions and contentions ; 
and what real causes have been given, on my side, for that 
opposition to me and my interest, which I have met with, 
as if I were an enemy, and not a friend, after all I have 
done and spent both here and there : I am sure I know not 
of any cause whatsoever. Were I sensible you really wanted 
anything of me, in the relation between us, that would make 

323 



WILLIAM PENN 

you happier, I should readily grant it, if any reasonable 
man would say it were fit for you to demand, provided you 
would also take such measures as were fit for me to join 
with. 

Before any one family had transported themselves 
thither, I earnestly endeavored to form such a model of 
government as might make all concerned in it easy ; which, 
nevertheless, was subject to be altered as there should be 
occasion. Soon after we got over, that model appeared, in 
some parts of it, to be very inconvenient, if not impractica- 
ble. The numbers of members, both in the Council and As- 
sembly, were much too large. Some other matters also 
proved inconsistent with the King's charter to me; so that, 
according to the power reserved for an alteration, there 
was a necessity to make one, in which, if the lower counties 
(the Territories) were brought in, it was well known at that 
time, to be on a view of advantage to the province itself, 
as well as to the people of those counties, and to the general 
satisfaction of those concerned, without the least apprehen- 
sion of any irregularity in the method. 

Upon this they had another charter passed, nemine 
contradiccntc, which I always desired might be continued 
while you yourselves would keep up to it and put it in prac- 
tise ; and many there know how much it was against my will, 
that, upon my last going over, it was vacated. But, after 
this was laid aside (which, indeed, was begun by yourselves 
in Colonel Fletcher's time), I, according to my engagement, 
left another, with all the privileges that were found con- 
venient for your good government; and, if any part of it 
has been, in any case, infringed, it was never by my appro- 
bation. I desired it might be enjoyed fully. But, though 
privileges ought to be tenderly preserved, they should not, 
on the other hand, be asserted under that name, to a licen- 
tiousness: the design of government is to preserve good 
order, which may be equally broke in upon by the turbulent 

324 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

endeavors of the people, as well as the overstraining of 
power in a Governor. I designed the people should be se- 
cured of an annual fixed election and Assembly; and that 
they should have the same privileges in it that any other 
Assembly has in the Queen's dominions; among all which 
this is one constant rule, as in the Parliament here, that they 
should sit on their own adjournments; but to strain this 
expression to a power to meet at all times during the year, 
without the Governor's concurrence, would be to distort 
government, to break the due proportion of the parts of it, 
to establish confusion in the place of necessary order, and 
make the legislative the executive part of government. 

Yet, for obtaining this power, I perceive, much time 
and money has been spent, and great struggles have been 
made, not only for this, but some other things that can not 
at all be for the advantage of the people to be possessed of ; 
particularly the appointing of judges ; because the adminis- 
tration might, by such means, be so clogged, that it would 
be difficult, if possible, under our circumstances, at some 
times to support it. As for my own part, as I desire nothing 
more than the tranquillity and prosperity of the province 
and government in all its branches, could I see that any of 
these things that have been contended for would certainly 
promote these ends, it would be a matter of indifference to 
me how they were settled. But, seeing the frame of every 
government ought to be regular in itself, well proportioned 
and subordinate in its parts, and every branch of it invested 
with sufficient power to discharge its respective duty for the 
support of the whole, I have cause to believe that nothing 
could be more destructive to it than to take so much of the 
provision and executive part of the government out of the 
Governor's hands and lodge it in an uncertain collective 
body ; and more especially since our government is depend- 
ent, and I am answerable to the Crown, if the administra- 
tion should fail, and a stop be put to the course of justice. 

325 



WILLIAM PENN 

On these considerations, I can not think it prudent in the 
people to crave these powers ; because, not only I, but they 
themselves, would be in danger of suffering by it. Could 
I believe otherwise, I should not be against granting any- 
thing of this kind, that were asked of me, with any degree 
of common prudence and civility. But, instead of finding 
cause to believe the contentions that have been raised about 
these matters have proceeded only from mistakes of judg- 
ment, with an earnest desire notwithstanding, at the bottom, 
to serve the public (which, I hope, has still been the induce- 
ment of several concerned in them), I have had but too 
sorrowful a view and sight to complain of the manner in 
which I have been treated. The attacks on my reputation ; 
the many indignities put upon me in papers sent over hither 
into the hands of those who could not be expected to make 
the most discreet and charitable use of them; the secret 
insinuations against my justice, besides the attempt made 
upon my estate ; resolves past in the Assemblies for turning 
my quit-rents, never sold by me, to the support of govern- 
ment ; my lands entered upon without any regular method ; 
my manors invaded (under pretense I had not duly sur- 
veyed them), and both these by persons principally con- 
cerned in these attempts against me here; a right to my 
overplus land unjustly claimed by the possessors of the 
tracts in which they are found; my private estate contin- 
ually exhausting for the support of that government, both 
here and there, and no provision made for it by that coun- 
try ; to all which I can not but add the violence that has been 
particularly shown to my Secretary; of which (though I 
shall by no means protect him in anything he can be justly 
charged with, but suffer him to stand or fall by his own 
actions) I can not but thus far take notice, that, from all 
the charges I have seen or heard of against him, I have 
cause to believe, that had he been as much in opposition to 
me as he has been understood to stand for me, he might 

326 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

have met with a milder treatment from his prosecutors ; and 
to think that any man should be the more exposed there on 
my account, and, instead of finding favor, meet with enmity, 
for his being engaged in my service, is a melancholy con- 
sideration. 

In short, when I reflect on all these heads, of which I 
have so much cause to complain, and, at the same time, 
think of the hardships I and my suffering family have been 
reduced to, in no small measure, owing to my endeavors for, 
and disappointments from that province; I can not but 
mourn the unhappiness of my portion, dealt to me from 
those, of whom I had reason to expect much better and 
different things ; nor can I but lament the unhappiness that 
too many of them are bringing upon themselves, who, in- 
stead of pursuing the amicable ways of peace, love, and 
unity, which I first hoped to find in that retirement, are 
cherished a spirit of contention and opposition, and, blind 
to their own interest, are oversetting that foundation on 
which your happiness might be built. 

Friends ! the eyes of many are upon you ; the people of 
many nations of Europe look on that country as a land of 
ease and quiet, wishing to themselves in vain the same 
blessings they conceive you may enjoy ; but, to see the use 
you make of them, is no less the cause of surprise to others, 
while such bitter complaints and reflections are seen to 
come from you, of which it is difficult to conceive either the 
sense or meaning. What are the distresses, grievances and 
oppressions, that the papers, sent from thence, so often say 
you languish under, while others have cause to believe you 
have hitherto lived, or might live, the happiest of any in the 
Queen's dominions? 

Is it such a grievous oppression, that the courts are 
established by my power, founded on the King's charter, 
without a law of your making, when upon the same plan you 
propose ? If this disturb any, take the advice of other able 

327 



WILLIAM PENN 

lawyers on the main, without tying me up to the opinion of 
principally one man, whom I can not think so very proper 
to direct in my affairs ( for I believe the late Assembly have 
had but that one lawyer among them), and I am freely 
content you should have any law that, by proper judges, 
should be found suitable. Is it your oppression that the 
officers' fees are not settled by an act of Assembly? No 
man can be a greater enemy to extortion than myself. Do, 
therefore, allow such fees as may reasonably encourage fit 
persons to undertake these offices, and you shall soon have 
(and should have always cheerfully had) mine, and, I 
hope, my Lieutenant's concurrence and approbation. Is it 
such an oppression that licenses for public houses have not 
been settled, as has been proposed ? It is a certain sign you 
are strangers to oppression, and know nothing but the name, 
when you so highly bestow it on matters so inconsiderable ; 
but that business I find is adjusted. 

Could I know any real oppression you lie under, that 
it is in my power to remedy (and what I wish you would 
take proper measures to remedy, if you truly feel any such) , 
I would be as ready, on my part, to remove them, as you 
to desire it ; but according to the best judgment I can make 
of the complaints I have seen, (and you once thought I had 
a pretty good one,) I must, in a deep sense of sorrow, say, 
that I fear the kind hand of Providence that has so long 
favored and protected you, will, by the ingratitude of many 
there, to the great mercies of God hitherto shown them, be 
at length provoked to convince them of their unworthiness ; 
and, by changing the blessings, that so little care has been 
taken by the public to deserve, into calamities, reduce those 
that have been so clamorous and causelessly discontented to 
a true but smarting sense of their duty. I write not this 
with a design to include all ; I doubt not, many of you have 
been burdened at, and can by no means join in, the measures 
that have been taken ; but, while such things appear under 

328 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

the name of an Assembly, that ought to represent the whole, 
I can not but speak more generally than I would desire, 
though I am not insensible what methods may be used to 
obtain the w^eight of such a name. 

I have already been tedious, and shall now, therefore, 
briefly say, that the opposition I have met with from thence 
must at length force me to consider more closely of my own 
private and sinking circumstances in relation to that prov- 
ince. In the meantime, I desire you all seriously to weigh 
what I have wrote, together with your duty to yourselves, 
to me, and to the world, who have their eyes upon you, and 
are witnesses of my early and earnest care for you. I must 
think there is a regard due to me that has not of late been 
paid ; pray consider of it fully, and think soberly what you 
have to desire of me, on the one hand, and ought to perform 
to me on the other ; for from the next Assembly I shall ex- 
pect to know what you resolve, and what I may depend on. 
If I must continue my regards to you, let me be engaged 
to it by a like disposition in you toward me. But if a 
plurality, after this, shall think they owe me none, or no 
more than for some years I have met with, let it, on a fair 
election, be so declared; and I shall then, without further 
suspense, know what I have to rely upon. God give you his 
wisdom and fear to direct you, that yet our poor country 
may be blessed with peace, love, and industry, and we may 
once more meet good friends, and live so to the end, our 
relation in the Truth having but the same true interest. 

I am, with great truth and most sincere regard, your 
real friend, as well as just Proprietor and Governor, 

William Penn. 

Viewed as an arraignment it would be difficult to add 
anything to or take anything from the foregoing letter. 
Whether or not Penn intended it to be his "Farewell Ad- 
dress," circumstances made it so. The particular feature 

329 



WILLIAM PENN 

of the letter likely to attract the attention of historical 
students is its assumption that Penn's ideal of success was 
possible under any circumstances, dealing with any race, 
class, or sect of people living in the seventeenth century. 

From this point of view and adopting Penn's own esti- 
mate of cause and effect, the conclusion seems irresistible 
that he was at least a century ahead of his time in concep- 
tion of possibilities in popular self-government, and alto- 
gether Utopian in his theories of actual administration. As 
individuals, man for man, the Quakers may not have been 
more ungovernable than members of other sects. But as 
a sect, en masse, they were totally so and could not have 
been otherwise, for the very basis of their creed was the 
Saltmarsh doctrine of universal anarchy. 

The proposed new bill of rights or constitution included 
provision for a permanent militia organization which, as 
in the other colonies, was to be armed and munitioned by 
the colony, but maintained by the Crown whenever embodied 
for service outside the province ; in other words, the regular 
provincial establishment of military force. The officers of 
the Crown also agreed to a clause allowing affirmation in lieu 
of oath in case of all persons holding religious scruples on 
that subject. In June, 1712, the negotiations were com- 
pleted. The amount to be paid by the Crown was £12,000, 
in four annual instalments. 

This agreement between Penn and the Queen's commis- 
sioners — two members of the Committee of Council on 
Trade and Plantations and the Solicitor-General — did not 
conclude the transaction. It had yet to be ratified by Act 
of Parliament. But Penn seems to have considered it an 

330 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

accomplished fact, lliulcr date of July 24, 1712, he ad- 
dressed to the provincial council — Messrs. Carpenter, Ship- 
pen, Hill, Norris, Pnsey, Preston, Owen, Story, and Ellis 
— the following letter of notification : 

KuscoMBE, Berks, 24th 5th mo. 1712. 

Dear and Worthy Friends : Plaving so fair an oppor- 
tunity, and having heard from you by the bearer, John 
French, I choose by him to salute you and yours; and all 
unnamed friends that you think worthy, for my heart loves 
such and heartily salutes them and theirs, and prays for 
your preservation in the Lord's everlasting truth, to the 
end of time ; and the way of it is, to take the Lord along with 
you in all your enterprises, to give you right sight, true 
counsel, and a just temper or moderation in all things; you 
knowing right well the Lord our God is near at hand. Now 
know, that though I have not actually sold my government 
to our truly good Queen, yet her able Lord Treasurer and 
I have agreed it, and that affair of the prizes, the bearer 
came hither about, is part of the Queen's payment, viz., her 
one-third ; and the other comes very opportunely, that be- 
longs to me, which I hope J. Logan will take care of, in the 
utmost farthing, and remit it to me first, to whom I suppose 
orders will go by this opportunity from the treasury, to that 
effect. 

But I have taken effectual care that all the laws and 
privileges I have granted to you, shall be observed by the 
Queen 's Governors, &c. ; and that we who are Friends shall 
be in a more particular manner regarded and treated by the 
Queen. So that you will not, I hope and believe, have a 
less interest in the government, being humble and discreet 
in our conduct. 

And you will find all the charters and proprietary gov- 
ernments annexed to the Crown, by an Act of Parliament, 
next winter; and perhaps Col. Quarry, if not J. Moore, 

331 



WILLIAM PENN 

may happen to be otherwise employed, notwithstanding the 
politic opinion of one of my officers in that government, 
that is still for gaining them, which I almost think impossi- 
ble. But be that as it will, I purpose to see you, if God give 
me life, this fall, but I grow old and infirm, yet would gladly 
see you once more before I die, and my young sons and 
daughter also, settled upon good tracts of land, for them 
and theirs after them, to clear and settle upon, as Jacob's 
sons did, I close when I tell you that I desire fervent prayers 
to the Lord for continuing my life, that I may see Pennsyl- 
vania once more before I die, and that I am your faithful, 
loving friend, William Penn. 

On the same day he wrote a private letter to Logan, of 
which the part relating to the sale is as follows : 

I rejoice that I am yet alive to write to thee, and if ever 
thou lovest me, or desirest my welfare, show it now, I pray 
thee, in my poor concerns, though I hope I have made an 
end with the Lord Treasurer about my business (twelve 
thousand pounds, payable in four years, the price ; with 
certain stipulations,) which I recommend to thy great care 
and diligence; for since the Lord has continued my life, I 
hope by the same token, to see an end of my incumbrances. 

The latter part of oeptember Penn, with his family, paid 
a visit to the Callowhills at Bristol. He seemed on a fair 
road to recovery from his malady, of which he had suffered 
a slight attack in August. He was so much encouraged at 
the prospect of restored health that plans for permanent 
removal to Pennsylvania were made. Part of his object in 
visiting Bristol pertained to the estate of Thomas Callow- 
hill, recently deceased. He intended to leave England as 
soon as Parliament should have ratified the sale. He had, 

332 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

in fact, already received an advance of £1,200 from the 
Crown as earnest money. But the end of William Penn's 
active career was nigh. 

Under date of October 4, 1712, he wrote to Logan from 
Bristol a letter which proved to be the last coherent product 
of his brain : * 

I do desire thee to move all springs that may deliver me 
from my present thraldom, as thou wilt answer it to the 
Great, All-seeing God, and all just and good men ; for it''s 
my excessive expenses upon Pennsylvania that has sunk me 
so low, and nothing else; my expenses yearly in England 
ever exceeding my yearly income. Hope for returns vanish- 
ing, no recourse was left but sale, which now waits only 
upon Parliament; a certain affirmation. 

And that which urges me more, is thy deep silence to 
my earnest expectation, upon my pressing order to thee to 
dispose Friends there, to come in with Friends here, to sink 
the present incumbrance on the country. It would have 
been a kindness I should not have forgotten ; but I see such 
a holdfast disposition in the most of men, that I almost 
despond. Yet the Attorney-General assures me, I might 
have made over my patent to any number of my friends, 
or a less number, as 48, 24, or 12, for the whole, as an in- 
corporated body, to have ruled in my stead [including my- 
self or family (with) a double vote] and so Friends would 
have had a country ; which Friends there and here may have 
time hereafter to consider of. And truly so great is the 
number and interest of Friends here, that they would 
always have had it in their power to have preserved their 
interest in the province to the end, in all revolutions in 
government here. But I am not to be heard either in civils 
or spirituals till I am dead. 

* Life and Selected Writings of William Penn, Friend's Library. 

333 



WILLIAM PENN 

I am now to tell thee that both my daughter and son, 
Aubrey, are under the greatest uneasiness about their 
money, which I desire, as well as allow thee, to return per 
first. 'Tis an epidemic disease on your side the sea, and 
the worst of all the seasoning, to be too oblivious of returns ; 
which I beseech thee to contradict by the most speedy 
methods possible. But as thou sayest the money intended 
[for] me was placed to account of my mortgages, but still 
kept there, and so from me — so I have paid William Aubrey, 
(with a mad bullying treatment from him into the bargain,) 
but £500, which, with several hundreds paid at several times 
to him here, makes near £1,100, besides what thou hast sold, 
and put out to interest there ; — which is so deep a cut to me 
here; — and nothing but my son's tempestuous and most 
rude treatment of my wife and self too, should have forced 
it from me. Therefore do not lessen thy care to pay me, or 
at least to secure the money on her manor of Mount Joy, 
for a plantation for me, or one of my children. 

I writ to thee of our great and unhappy loss and revolu- 
tion at Bristol, by the death of our near and dear friends, 
father and mother Callowhill ; so shall only say that he has 
left all his concerns in America, to poor John, who had 
almost followed his grandfather, and who, by his sorrow at 
his death and burial, and also by his behavior since, has jus- 
tified my special regards to him, as of an uncommon char- 
acter and capacity. Now, through the Lord's mercy, he is 
on the recovery, as I now likewise am, by the same Divine 
goodness; for I have been most dangerously ill at London. 

A peace certainly — and that whether the Dutch will or 
not ; and whom our folks threaten shall pay for the recover- 
ing of it too ; which will not be less than a million of money ; 
and I advise you to be discreet in those parts of the world, 
and may the simplicity, humility, and serious sincerity of 
the Christian life and doctrine, be your aim and attain- 
ment in the peace and plenty you are blest withal. 

334 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

I am glad to see Sybilla Masters, who has come down 
to the city, and is with us, but sorry at M. Phillips 's coming, 
without a just hint of it. She 

This unfinished letter Hannah Penn enclosed to Logan, 
with an explanatory note dated October 13, 1712, as follows : 

Esteemed Friend: The enclosed my poor husband 
wrote, but had not time to finish before he was taken with 
a second fit of his lethargic illness, like as about six months 
ago, at London. But it has pleased the Lord, in the midst 
of judgment to show us mercy in the comfortable prospect 
of his recovery ; though as yet but weak. I am ordered by 
the doctors to keep all business from him till he is stronger ; 
and yet, loath to let what he has wrote be left behind, I 
thought best to send it, though unfinished, for thee to make 
the best use of, there being several things of moment. I 
pray thee use thy utmost diligence to settle things and re- 
turns for our comfort. 

To this note of his wife William Penn tried to add a 
postscript, of which only the following words are legible in 
the manuscript: 

Farewell ! and pursue former exact orders thou 

wilt — oblige thy real [friend?] My love to — dear 

friends. W. P. 

Penn's condition now forbade travel and compelled the 
family to remain at Bristol until January, 1713. By that 
time he was so much improved that the physicians permitted 
him to undertake the journey to his home at Ruscombe. 
They contemplated only the return thither, and, perhaps, 
had he obeyed their instructions, he might have rallied 
completely. Though in his seventieth year, he still pos- 

335 



WILLIAM PENN 

sessed considerable physical vitality and strength, but he 
could not endure mental strain. However, after leaving 
Bristol he determined to visit London before returning to 
Ruscombe. He wished to see certain friends in the council 
and also Vice-Chancellor Sir Richard West, to whom the 
Crown had entrusted the legal elements involved in the 
transfer. He carried out this part of his program. But, 
while engaged in an interview with the vice-chancellor, he 
broke down again both physically and mentally. His wife, 
however, succeeded in conveying him from London to Rus- 
combe, where he had another attack which verged upon 
total collapse, which Hannah Penn describes in a letter to 
Logan dated February — , 1713 : 

Esteemed Friend : I wrote to thee about three months 
since, in a postscript, or rather conclusion of a letter from 
my husband who was then very ill at Bristol, but recovered 
so as by easy journeys to reach London, where he endeav- 
ored to settle some affairs and get some laws passed for that 
country's [the colony's] ease and his own and family's 
comfort ; * but finding himself unable to bear the fatigues 
of the town he just reached Ruscombe when he was again 
seized with the same severe illness that he has twice before 
labored under. And though, through the Lord's mercy, 
he is much better than he was and in a pretty hopeful way 
of recovery, yet I am forbid by his doctors to trouble him 
with any business till better. 

This was practically the end of William Penn. Though 
he lived five years and five months longer and maintained 
to some extent his physical strength and powers of locomo- 

* She refers in this obscure way to his efforts toward expediting the Act 
of Parliament ratifying the terms of sale and transfer of the Proprietary. 

336 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

tion, his mind was never clear again. Within a year from 
the date of his wife's letter to Logan just quoted the law- 
officers of the Crown, upon motion of Sir Richard West, 
vice-chancellor, adjudged him incapable of transacting busi- 
ness and the proceedings looking to sale of his Proprietary 
were suspended. The opinion of the vice-chancellor in 
these premises was interesting. He held that while Penn 
seemed competent enough to transact business during the 
preliminary negotiations, the transfer could not be com- 
pleted without his signature to an instrument of final re- 
nunciation ; that his mental condition was now such as to 
presuppose incapacity to realize the nature of any instru- 
ment ; therefore his signature would be void at law, and his 
heirs could contest the validity of the transfer as soon as 
his death should make his will operative, the will having 
been written and duly witnessed in 1711, before any signs 
of aberration had developed. 

The bill to confirm the sale was therefore withdrawn 
from Parliament, and Hannah Penn was made curator — or 
curatrix — of his property and custodian of his person under 
the common law. 

No professional description or diagnosis of Penn's con- 
dition after the third paroxysm in 1713 seems to be extant. 
The law-officers who pronounced him incapacitated from 
transacting business did not file any medical opinion with 
their report, nor did they indicate that he had been exam- 
ined by physicians. Their report, so far as the state papers 
show, was based upon the motion of Sir Richard West, who 
sustained it by oral representation of Penn's mental state 

as observed by himself in their last interviews. 
23 337 



WILLIAM PENN 

The only document approaching description is that 
found in the journal of Thomas Story, who was sent to 
England by the provincial council (of which he was a mem- 
ber) in November, 1714, to ascertain and report the facts 
for their information. There seems to have been some doubt 
among Penn's closest friends in the colony whether or not 
he was being fairly dealt with. Some of them suspected 
that advantage had been taken of his illness by his wife and 
her advisers to transfer control of the province into her 
hands. This was the view taken by those who championed 
the interests of the children by the first wife, and who be- 
lieved that the will, which excluded that branch of the family 
from share in the Proprietary, had been procured by im- 
proper influences. Lloyd's report, however, seems to have 
set the doubts and suspicions at rest. In his journal, pages 
463-464, appears the following: 

He was then under the lamentable effects of an apo- 
pletic fit, which he had had some time before ; for his mem- 
ory was almost quite lost, and the use of his understanding 
suspended, so that he was not so conversable as formerly, 
and yet as near the Truth, in the love of it, as before, where- 
in appeared the great mercy and favor of God, who looks 
not as man looks; for, though to some this accident might 
look like judgment, and, no doubt, his enemies so accounted 
it, yet it will bear quite another interpretation, if it be 
considered how little time of rest he ever had from the 
importunities of the affairs of others, to the great hurt of 
his own and suspension of all his enjoyments, till this hap- 
pened to him, by which he was rendered incapable of all 
business, and yet sensible of the enjoyment of Truth as at 
any time in all his life. 

When I went to the house I thought myself strong 

338 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

enough to see him in that condition ; but when I entered 
the room, and perceived the great defect of his expressions 
for want of memory, it greatly bowed my spirit under a 
consideration of the uncertainty of all human qualifications, 
and what the finest of men are soon reduced to by a dis- 
order of the organs of that body, with which the soul is 
connected and acts during this present mode of being. 
When these are but a little obstructed in their various func- 
tions, a man of the clearest parts and finest expression 
becomes scarcely intelligible. 

Nevertheless, no insanity, or lunacy, at all appeared in 
his actions; and his mind was in an innocent state, as ap- 
peared by his very loving deportment to all that came near 
him ; and that he had still a good sense of Truth is plain by 
some very clear sentences he spoke in the life and power 
of Truth in an evening meeting we had together there, where- 
in we were greatly comforted ; so that I was ready to think 
this was a sort of sequestration of him from all the concerns 
of this life, which so much oppressed him, not in judgment, 
but in mercy, that he might have rest, and not be oppressed 
thereby to the end. 

This condition remained unchanged to the end. Though 
almost wholly oblivious of the past, and incapable of con- 
secutive thought or coherent expression upon any affair of 
business, public or private, his mind seemed clear upon re- 
ligious subjects, and but for a constantly increasing diffi- 
culty in articulation, he could discourse as fluently as ever 
with regard to them.* 

* One of the most eminent living neurologists has informed us tliat this 
is a frequent phenomenon in eases of religious dementia ; that while all 
the normal or secular faculties may be clouded or totally eclipsed, the 
patient will yet be able to preach or pray with fervor, using language with 
fluency and eloquence, and maintaining lines of thought as consistent and 
unbroken as any sane person fould do. 

339 



WILLIAM PENN 

Judging from her letters to Logan during this pe- 
riod, Hannah Penn seems to have encouraged the tenden- 
cy of her husband's mind toward spiritual meditation 
and discourse, with the view, no doubt, of averting 
from him all thoughts^ — or attempts to think — of temporal 
concerns. 

Early in this period Hannah Penn obtained the highest 
legal advice as to the sufficiency and validity of the will of 
1711 and its codicil of 1712. Sometime in 1714 she was ad- 
vised by such authorities as Vice-Chancellor Sir Richard 
West and Sir Edward Northey that the will was valid and 
would be probated without contest at Penn's death, when- 
ever that might occur. 

Then all the mental power and strength of wnll possessed 
by this remarkable woman became manifest. The sale of 
the Proprietary, as we have already seen, had been sus- 
pended indefinitely, or during the lifetime of the disabled 
testator. She now determined that, if she could prevent it, 
the negotiations should never be renewed, and that, if what 
had already been done could be canceled, she would save 
for her own children the imperial domain of Pennsylvania. 
She was the sole surviving issue of Thomas Callowhill, and 
by his death became trustee of the Callowhill estate for its 
minor heir, who was her own eldest son, John Penn, then 
(1714) a lad of fifteen years. The income of this estate 
was considerable — at least £3,000 a year — and she was en- 
titled to use the whole of it for the maintenance and educa- 
tion of all her children during the minority of the heir 
at law. This rendered her temporarily independent of 
resources from the Proprietary itself and left her free to 

340 



PENN'S LAST DAYS 

employ the ablest legal assistance in her efforts to retain 
it in her family. 

Under such circumstances the affairs of the province 
drifted along, as related in the preceding chapter, on the 
succession of governors, until July 30, 1718, William Penn 
died that day and Hannah Fenn became sole executrix 
under the will, vested with all the powers of the Propri- 
etary pending the minority of the youngest of her three 
boys, to whom it had been devised jointly. This was 
Richard, born in 1709. He would not reach his majority 
until 1730, and that gave Hannah Penn's term as execu- 
trix twelve years to run. 

Circumstances favored her plans. The death of Queen 
Anne and the accession of George I in 1714, just at the 
beginning of her management as curatrix and custodian, 
put an end to all the tentative negotiations which had pre- 
ceded the mental breakdown of her husband. She was 
able to refund the advance of £1,200 which had been paid 
by the ojfficers of the Crown under Queen Anne. This left 
the whole affair just as it stood before Penn began his 
negotiations for sale and transfer. Any further steps in 
that direction must be taken de novo. 

George I and his advisers proved indifferent to the 
concerns of the Proprietary. They made no overtures to 
renew or revive the bargain. Of course Hannah Penn 
offered none. There was no danger so long as Penn lived. 
But after his death the will would be operative. That 
instrument named three earls — Oxford, Poulett, and Morti- 
mer — trustees of the Proprietary, with power to convey it 
to the Queen or to any other person or persons. They, how- 

341 



WILLIAM PENN 

ever, were friendly to Mrs. Penn. There is every reason 
to believe that they were in her confidence and approved 
her plan. At all events, when Penn died and their powers 
under the will became operative, they left the whole affair 
in her hands as executrix, and gave themselves no concern 
about the matter, except when she asked their advice, which 
was not often. Thus, almost by default it might be said, 
Mrs. Penn managed the Proprietary from 1712 till 1727. 
In 1722 Mrs. Penn suffered a stroke of paralysis which per- 
manently affected her left side. It did not make any im- 
pression on her faculties of mind, but she had little use of 
her left arm and leg and was nearly deaf in her left ear. 
She soon rallied and continued to exercise the functions of 
the Proprietary until September, 1727, when a second stroke 
proved fatal. 

By this time Mrs. Penn's eldest son, John Penn, was 
in his twenty-eighth year. During her lifetime as execu- 
trix Hannah Penn had effected a general settlement under 
the terms of the will whereby John Penn became principal 
Proprietary, with his younger brothers, Thomas and Rich- 
ard, as minority associates. She paid off all the liens, com- 
promised or commuted the grants of land made in the 
will to the children of the first wife, and procured a defi- 
nite and formal annulment of the proposed sale and 
transfer. 

On the whole, Hannah Penn's administration, from 
1712 to 1727, was far more practical and successful than 
that of William Penn from 1681 to 1712. When William 
Penn's faculties failed in 1712 he left to his wife and 

342 



FENN'S LAST DAYS 

children a vast estate so hopelessly entangled in every kind 
of complication that ruin seemed inevitable. When Hannah 
Penn died in 1727 she left the same estate to her three 
sons — the most magnificent domain on earth owned by pri- 
vate individuals. , 



343 



CHAPTER XIII 

1717-1776 

PENNSYLVANIA UNDER PENN'S DESCENDANTS 



CHAPTER XIII 

1717-1776 
PENNSYLVANIA UNDER PENN 'S DESCENDANTS 

About 1722 Governor Keith had begun to antagonize 
Hannah Penn, and he covertly advised the popular leaders 
to organize a party having for its object abolition of the 
Proprietary system. Penn's will had given the English 
and Irish estates to Gulielma Springett's children and the 
Pennsylvania Proprietary to those of Hannah Callowhill, 
Keith did not like the latter 's eldest son, John Penn, who 
had then reached the age of twenty-three, and did not be- 
lieve he would be acceptable to the people — an apprehension 
which subsequently proved well founded. This made his 
situation unpleasant. But that was not the worst. In 
1720 Keith's father died, leaving to him the baronetcy and 
a heavily encumbered estate in Aberdeenshire. In hope of 
making money to pay oft" these obligations Keith embarked 
heavily in colonial speculations, not hesitating to use his 
official position to further private ends. His speculations 
were not fortunate. 

In June, 1726, Hannah Penn appointed Patrick Gordon 
to succeed Keith. This was her last act as executrix. Final 
settlement of the estate under the will soon followed and 

347 



WILLIAM PENN 

John Penn became chief Proprietary,* though, as appears 
from the Logan correspondence, she continued to be the real 
head or directing mind until her death, seven years later. 
Gordon's term was barren of historical events. Its most 
noteworthy occurrence was the visit of Thomas Penn in 
1732, followed by John Penn in 1734. Thomas Penn was 
the originator of the famous — or infamous — ' ' walking pur- 
chase" of September, 173S, to which reference has been 
made in a preceding page. The impression made by both 
these sons of Penn and Hannah Callowhill was extremely 
unpleasant. Those who remembered the courteous manners 
and gentle bearing of yoimg William Penn, despite his 
unfortunate adventures, compared his half-brothers most 
unfavorably with him. 

Benjamin Franklin was editor and proprietor of the 
Pennsylvania Gazette during the visit of Thomas and John 
Penn. He had never seen young William Penn, but became 
acquainted with the two other sons. On a certain occasion 
he remarked to Dr. Read that "according to all accounts 
there was more of the gentleman in Billy Penn drunk than 
in both of these Penns sober." John and Thomas were 
much alike. Neither possessed an atom of William Penn's 
goodness of heart or breadth of character. They were 
sordid, unscrupulous, overbearing, and dishonest. John 
had more sense than Thomas. The latter was little better 
than a common blockhead in all except money-getting and 
money-keeping. He was greedy, stingy, and cruel, and 
withal dull, repellent, and morose. 

* John Penn's interest in the Proprietary was one-half. His younger 
brothers, Thomas and Kichard, had each one-fourth. 

348 



UNDER PENN'S DESCENDANTS 

John was more presentable socially, and could be agree- 
able when it suited his fancy. But he was supercilious, and 
never failed to give the air of condescension to his good 
graces. He remained in the province but little over a year. 
During his stay he assumed the Proprietary right to a seat 
in tlie council, but there is no record of anything he did, 
except to propose that the assembly pass an act creating 
a special court for the collection of arrears of quit-rents; 
to be independent of the regular courts, and to have power 
of distraint without appeal. He was reminded by James 
Logan that the question of quit-rents had been settled by 
the Carpenter case * many years before, and that an attempt 
to revive it would doubtless result in a popular movement 
en masse to abolish the Proprietary. 

John Penn returned to England in 1736, and was fol- 
lowed by Thomas in 1741. Neither ever returned. Both 
went away much disgusted with the colony, a feeling which 
the colony reciprocated with compound interest, f 

* This case occurred in 170G. Penn, driven to desperation by bis debts 
in general and tbe demands of tbe Fords (see Chapter XII) in particular, 
bad directed Governor Evans to take legal steps for collection of arrears 
in quit-rents. Joshua Carpenter, whilom bosom-friend of Penn and one 
of the richest Quakers in the colony, made a test case, with David Lloyd 
as counsel. Penn's complaint was thrown out of court, and Carpenter 
recovered damages for the distraint made on his property. 

f Hardly had Thomas Penn boarded the ship for England, when a bill 
was introduced in the assembly providing for taxation upon the private 
estates or " manors " of the Penns, hitherto exempt. The author of this 
bill was a Quaker named Wharton. It gave rise to a struggle between 
the popular assembly and the Proprietary which lasted until 17G4, when 
the assembly almost unanimously petitioned the Crown to abolish the Pro- 
prietary and assume control of the province ; and at the same time framed 
a representative charter similar to that of New York, Avhich was submitted 
for approval of the home Government. Nothing was done, however, 
until twelve years later. 

349 



WILLIAM PENN 

Governor Gordon was generally popular, and his ad- 
ministration, apart from the scandals brought on by the 
greed and dishonesty of the two Penns, forms a pleasant 
interlude in the otherwise troublous history of Proprietary 
Pennsylvania. He died in June, 1736. James Logan then 
discharged the chief executive functions ad interim as 
president of the council until June, 1738, when George 
Thomas was appointed by the Penn brothers. 

Thomas was enthusiastically loyal to the Crown. In 
1745, when the news of the defeat of the pretender by the 
Duke of Cumberland at Culloden reached the colony, he 
gave a grand public dinner in honor of the event and asked 
the assembly to foot the bills. They quite properly re- 
fused, on the ground that they could not reasonably be held 
to pay for a dinner they had not ordered. He then de- 
frayed the expense out of his own pocket, but the affair 
stung him deeply. He asked to be relieved shortly after- 
ward. His request was "taken under advisement," but 
nothing was done. He waited over a year, and then, on 
June 17, 1747, peremptorily resigned, leaving Anthony 
Palmer, president of the council, governor ad interim, and 
sailed for England a few days afterward. 

In June, 1748, James Hamilton * was appointed to sue- 

* James Hamilton was the son of Andrew Hamilton, a Scotchman, who 
emigrated to Virginia about 1697, and settled in what is now Accomac 
County, " Eastern Shore," where the son was born in June, 1709. Hamil- 
ton was not his (Andrew's) real name, which, in fact, was never revealed. 
He was, in his time, popularly believed to be a natural son of the Duke 
of York (James II), to whom his physical resemblance was most striking. 
When James Hamilton was seven years old, his father, Andrew, removed 
to Philadelphia, and was appointed attorney-general of the province the 
next year (1717). He held successively the offices of clerk of the Supreme 

350 



^^s 







m. 



JOHN PENN. 

Son of William IVnu. 



UNDER PENN'S DESCENDANTS 

ceed Thomas. He was the first Pennsylvania governor of 
American birth and breeding. His administration was the 
most harmonious and salutary the province had ever en- 
joyed, excepting, perhaps, the two brief terms of William 
Penn himself (1682 to 1684 and 1699 to 1701). There was 
no friction between him and the popular branch. He had 
no fads and attempted no "reforms." He considered the 
system as good as a Proprietary government could be, and 
exerted himself to make it as beneficial to the public as 
possible. In 1752, on the occasion of the King's birthday, 
he gave a grand public banquet, ordered a general holiday, 
and illuminated the city, paying the bills himself. But 
he was promptly reimbursed by the corporation without 
request on his part, and the assembly afterward, of 
its own motion, refunded half the amount to the city cor- 
poration. 

Governor Hamilton also popularized himself exceed- 

Court (1727); member of assembly and speaker (1729-37); and judge 
of the Admiralty Court — an appointment of the Crown — which he held 
until his death, in 1741. James was elected to the assembly at the age of 
twenty-three, and served six consecutive terms ; mayor of Philadelphia 
1745-'46, and declined reelection to enter the provincial council, of 
which he was a member; and in England on public business in 1748, when 
he was appointed deputy-governor. After Braddock's defeat in 1755 he went 
to the frontier (being then president of the council) and most strenuously 
devoted himself to rallying and encouraging the hardy settlers to defend 
their homes. No public funds being available, he supplied them with 
rifles, knives, hatchets, ammunition, blankets, and other necessaries out of 
his private means, which were ample. Among other things, he bought all 
the rifles then on hand in the gun-shops of Lancaster, at a cost of nearly 
£2,000. To him more than to any one else the colony was indebted for 
the chain of forts from the west branch of the Susquehanna to the Mary- 
land line at Fort Cumberland. In 1777 he was arrested as a Tory and 
held on parole nearly two years. 

351 



WILLIAM PENN 

ingly by personal attention to the needs of the poor. The 
population of the province had then (1752) reached two 
hundred thousand, and Philadelphia was a city of forty-odd 
thousand. Governor Hamilton lent his official influence to 
the foundation of a seaman's hospital and a general charity 
hospital for the poor of the city, contributing to them liber- 
ally from his own private means. His popularity seems to 
have excited the suspicions or resentment of the Proprie- 
taries (then Thomas and Richard Penn, John having died 
in 1746) . They knew, in fact, that Hamilton did not believe 
the proprietary system ought to be perpetuated, and they 
suspected him of secretly cooperating with Dr. Franklin 
and others in the popular movement against it. They did 
not dare to attempt his removal. However, he disliked them 
more than they him, and in October, 1754, he resigned per- 
emptorily, without assigning any reason, and was at once 
elected president of the council — a position independent of 

^ Proprietary appointment or control. 

He was succeeded by Colonel Robert Hunter Morris, 
who held office from 1754 to 1756, when he was succeeded 
by William Denny. Both these administrations were 
stormy and both governors extremely unpopular, Denny 
in particular. This fact, however, can hardly be ascribed 
to fault of theirs. The period was that of the old French 
War, which, for the first time in the history of the colony, 
brought the pressure of Indian warfare on a large scale 
home to her own frontiers. The 'Quaker peace policy had 
vanished with Thomas Penn's "walking purchase" of 

"1 17^ And now, twenty-odd years later, Pennsylvania was 
made to feel what had so long been familiar to the frontiers- 

352 



UNDER PENN'S DESCENDANTS 

meu oi' New York and New England — the sinister power of 
French influence upon the Indians. 

Robert Hunter Morris was a son of Lewis Morris, of 
New York, and grandson of Richard Morris,* who com- 
manded Ireton's regiment of horse in Cromwell's army 
after Ireton became a general. He was therefore of the 
fighting Puritan stock, and as such ill constituted to govern 
a Quaker province. Governor Morris had to deal with 
Pennsylvania and the peculiarities of its Quaker population 
during the crisis brought on by Braddock's expedition and 
defeat. The history of his quarrel with the assembly on 
the subject of defense has been ably written by Winthrop 
Sargeant. It exhibits him in a light honorable to himself 
and creditable to his station; and it exhibits the Quakers 
in an attitude scarcely less pusillanimous and contemptible 
than that of Governor Evans's "false alarm," forty years 
before. After several vain efforts to persuade the assembly 
to adopt a vigorous and manly policy in the general system 
of defense, Morris resigned. In the letter accompanying 
his resignation he declared, among other things, that no 
man of honor, patriotism, or courage could act in concert 
with such a concourse. 

* Richard Morris was one of those proscribed and condemned on the 
restoration of Charles II. He went to the West Indies, where he lived in 
seclusion for a time. Then he came to New York and settled a tract of 
land (about 3,000 acres) near Haarlem, whicli he had bought from the In- 
dians in 1650. This was the manor of Morrisania. He was the founder 
of the American family which produced, in succeeding generations, Rob- 
ert Hunter Morris, Lewis Morris, signer of the Declaration, Gouverneur 
Morris, and many other eminent men, including Colonel Lewis Morris, 
killed at the head of his regiment in the capture of Monterey, and his son, 
Colonel Lewis O. Morris, killed in the assault at Cold Harbor in the civil 
war. 

24 353 



WILLIAM PENN 

William Denny fell heir to all the troubles of his prede- 
cessor. But his task was lightened by the action of the 
frontier settlers, who, after Braddoek's defeat, formed in- 
dependent companies of riflemen and began fighting the 
Indians in their own way. These settlers were all Scotch- 
Irish, Germans, or Swiss, with a few Huguenots; but no 
Quaker was ever known to get — or stay — near such a dan- 
ger-line as the Pennsylvania border was from 1755 to 1759. 
The few Quakers on the frontier — mostly traders — fled to 
Philadelphia at the first sign of war.* 

In 1756, shortly after Governor Denny assumed office 
and the refusal of the assembly to grant supplies for de- 
fense became known along the frontier, the rough moun- 
taineers assembled in Philadelphia to the number of four 
hundred or five hundred. Clad in buckskin, wearing long 
hair, and armed with long rifles, accoutered with powder- 
horns, tomahawks, bullet-pouches, and hunting-knives, they 
terrorized the town. There is no record of any overt act 
on their part, though they openly announced their intention 
— if the assembly did not vote the supplies they needed — to 
take them wherever they could be found. Though they 
numbered not more than one to the hundred of the city's 
population, every one knew that if they once began they 



* In 1755, just after Braddoek's defeat, two Quakers trading at Loyal 
Hanna asked Captain James Brady to escort them with a squad of his 
men — the famous independent company of " Brady's Rangers " — to a 
place of safety. Brady detailed seventeen men, under Sergeant McGil- 
very, to " escort the Quakers." The detachment marched with them one 
day, then seized their pack-horses, confiscated their goods, and told the 
Quakers to run for their lives — which they did. The feeling among the 
frontiersmen was almost as bitter toward the Quakers as toward the Indians. 

354 



UNDER PENN'S DESCENDANTS 

would ravage the town iu spite of any civic i'orce that could 
oppose them. 

The Quakers, finding themselves between the devil and 
the deep sea — with Indians on one hand and angry moun- 
taineers on the other — began in a niggardly way to vote 
supplies. A historian * of Quaker sympathies says of this 
period : 

The assemblies always offended by trying to spare the 
purses of the people, and the governors always got provoked 
because they had not lavish supplies for the King's serv- 
ice. ... It was really pitiable to see what levies were 
perpetually put upon the poor province to help them [the 
English] out of the squabbles generated by the courts of 
Europe. 

A contest for the empire of North America seems to have 
been nothing more imposing than "a squabble," from the 
Quaker point of view. 

In a special message dated September 8, 1757, Governor 
Denny says : 

To your puerile plaints and subterfuges of excuse un- 
worthy of men or of manhood I offer no answer. Moderation 
is agreeable to me. But you might have had another governor 
candid enough to tell you, what I keenly feel, that the whole 
tenor of your memorial of remonstrance is evasive, frivolous, 
and indecent. And another governor might also be frank 
enough to say that your attitude is more likely the dictate 
of cowardice than the prompting of conscience. ... If 
detraction and personal abuse of your governor were 
worthy of notice in this more than in former instances, it 
might be said a governor of Pennsylvania soon gets accus- 

* W'.itaon's Annals, vol. ii, p. 27"). 
355 



WILLIAM PENN 

tomed to sucli in a degree that leaves your censure without 
sting. ... I have the less reason to regret such usage, since 
it is obvious, from your similar conduct toward those gone 
before me, that you are not so much displeased with the 
person governing as impatient of being governed at all. 

However, under various kinds of pressure, but chiefly 
fear of another and more earnest visit from the moun- 
taineers, the assembly during the years 1757-1759 granted 
supplies amounting to £218,000, about half of which was 
for General Forbes 's expedition against Fort Duquesne.* 

To raise the amount necessary for the Forbes expedition 
the assembly found it necessary to tax the property of the 
Penns. Governor Denny 's signature to this bill gave mortal 
offense to Richard and Thomas Penn, who forthwith re- 
moved him. This foolish act, the reasons for which soon 
became public, was the last nail in the coffin of proprietary 
government. The next assembly repeated and increased 
the tax. The Penns tried to resist it, but yielded when the 
assembly, council, and judiciary joined in a system of dis- 
traint which the governor could not control. Denny said 
to Dr. Franklin that he was glad to escape, and that three 
years of the governorship as he had held it would turn any 
sane man against the proprietary system. "Particularly 
with Tom and Dick Penn for Proprietors ! ' ' was the sar- 
donic rejoinder of the philosopher. 

James Hamilton was now reappointed governor and 
held the office from November 17, 1759, to October 31, 1763, 

* For this appropriation General Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in- 
chief, thanked the assembly in person, saying, among other things, that 
he appreciated their sacrifice of conscientious scruples to the public good. 

356 




THOMAS PENN. . 
Son of William Penn. 



UNDER PENN'S DESCENDANTS 

without special incident. He was then relieved by John 
Penn second, son of Richard. John Penn held the govern- 
ment until October 16, 1771. His "reign," as Franklin 
called it, was the stormiest in all the Proprietary annals. 
In the first year a formidable revolt of the mountaineers 
occurred, known as the "revolution of the Paxton boys." 
They defied a battalion of British regulars at Lancaster, 
informing them that "if they fired so much as one shot 
their scalps would ornament every cabin from the Sus(jue- 
lianna to the Ohio." 

The regulars did not fire. The Paxton boys then helped 
themselves to all the horses and supplies they wanted — 
including the ammunition-wagons of the regulars — and 
started for Philadelphia. They appeared on the heights of 
Germantown nearly a thousand strong, and demanded that 
certain Indians then guarded in the Northern Liberties be 
given to them or they would sack the city. Finding that the 
regulars could not be depended on to face them, a deputa- 
tion of the most influential citizens parleyed with the insur- 
gents. Finally, by agreeing to everything they demanded 
— except the privilege of massacring the Indians — the 
citizens succeeded in persuading the mountaineers to return 
to their homes. 

Soon after this the assembly petitioned the Crown and 
Parliament to abolish the Proprietary. John Penn went to 
England in 1771, leaving his brother Richard acting gov- 
ernor. He returned and resumed the office in August, 1773. 
It seemed a coincidence of fate that the last Proprietary 
governor of Pennsylvania should have been, like the first, 
a Penn, grandson of his grandfather, and that — with the 

357 



WILLIAM PENN 

brief exception of Richard, hardly worth mention — they 
were the only Penns who ever governed in person. The 
grandson came only to attend the funeral and witness the 
burial of the system his grandfather founded. He tried 
hard to carry water on both shoulders, but the spirit then 
moving the people knew no middle ground. 

The most cruel and sordid episode of John Penn's ab- 
horrent "reign" is known in history as "the Pennamite 
War" — or "Wars." This is now an almost forgotten page 
of history, and might have gone to oblivion altogether but 
for its association with the story of Wyoming. Francis W. 
Halsey, in 1901, in his vivid history The Old New York 
Frontier, gave it a new lease upon memory. He says (pp. 
217-218) : 

Wyoming had been settled from Connecticut, and under 
the charter granted by the King was claimed as a township 
of that State, with the name of Westmoreland. But it was 
also claimed by the heirs of William Penn. For many years 
before the Revolution there had been bitter, and even 
armed, controversy over this disputed ownership. During 
these Pennamite Wars the settlement on three occasions had 
virtually been destroyed. As early as 1750 men from Con- 
necticut had visited this beautiful wilderness valley and 
made report on its extraordinary fertility. But it was not 
until 1762 that any from that State arrived to cultivate 
the soil, and not until after the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 
1768 that they came in large numbers to establish homes 
upon it. . . . From the Pennamite Wars had survived at 
Wyoming a stockade called Forty Fort. . . . 

It is to be regretted that Halsey should have treated 
the Pennamite Wars as a simple incident in the history of 

358 



UNDER PENN'S DESCENDANTS 

Wyoming, and even then merely by way of explaining the 
existence of the only defensive work it possessed in 1778, 
His book, however, deals specifically with New York State 
history, with which during the Revolution the Wyoming 
massacre of 1778 had close relations. 

The settlement of 1762 which he mentions consisted of 
about fifty families. The husbands and fathers had come 
from Connecticut in the previous year, made clearings, 
raised a little corn, built some humble log cabins, and the 
next summer brought on their families — mostly from Litch- 
field. John Penn heard of this settlement in 1764, the 
second year of his "reign," and he sent constables to order 
them off, claiming that they were within the territory cov- 
ered by the treaty and deed of Governor Dongan on behalf 
of his grandfather in 1686.* 

Meantime the Wyoming settlement had grown to a popu- 
lation of nearly 3,000 — a blooming oasis in the wilderness. 
An association of Quakers, called the Delaware Company, 
was formed in Philadelphia, who proposed to buy the lands 
of John Penn and pay cash, at a valuation about four times 
that of William Penn's original terms. They expected 
thereby to get at comparatively small cost the benefit of the 
improvements made by the Connecticut pioneers. But a 
condition of their purchase was that John Penn should oust 
the settlers. In 1770 John Penn hired a gang of ruffians, 
mainly discharged British soldiers, to invade Wyoming and 

* For particulars of this transaction sec Colonial Records, Penna., 
vol. ii ; also Jannoy, pp. 427, 428. The deed from Dongan to Tenn is 
dated January 13, 1606, and the consideration named is £100. It i)rcn-ides 
for cession of " all lands of the Susquehannah south of the colony bound- 
ary of New York." 

359 



UNDEK PENN'S DESCENDANTS 

drive the pioneers from their homes. Then they defied him 
and built the famous Forty Fort. The settlers, after many 
vicissitudes and some fighting, held their ground. 

It is amazing that John Penn, with the distant thunders 
of the American Revolution muttering in his ears, and 
the foundations of his absurd and obsolete Proprietary 
crumbling under him, should have attempted such an 
atrocity upon the brink of his own ruin. But what shall be 
said of the association of Quakers who so cunningly and so 
cruelly devised a scheme of profit from the misery and 
murder of the Wyoming settlers'? The darkest chapter in 
all the history of Quakerdom is that one. Never before or 
since did the Inward Light of Quakerism shine so balefully. 
It was the Spiritualization of Self into a Gospel of Greed ; 
of Avarice into a Religion of Rapine; the Prayer for 
Money that had Murder for its Answer. 

The Quakers of Philadelphia would not take up arms 
themselves against the Wyoming settlers; but they stood 
ready to grasp the profits of their improvements whenever 
John Penn's ruffianlj^ mercenaries might drive the pioneers 
from their humble homes. In the Delaware Land Company 
are to be found such Quaker names as Carpenter, Shippen, 
Norris, Story, Griscom, Pemberton, Wharton, Pusey, Hill, 
Barker, Bailey, et al., all leading "Friends," all pious, all 
devout, all rich, and yet all ready and anxious to swell their 
coffers with the plunder torn from a feeble settlement of 
pioneers in a wilderness which was no man's property, but 
the prize of every man brave enough to invade and subdue 
it. Well may the student of history search Quaker writers 
in vain for a true story of the * ' Pennamite Wars. ' ' 

361 



W I L L I A ]\I P E N N 

It was the last gasp. In the fall of 1775 the Continental 
Congress passed the act creating a navy and giving Paul 
Jones a lieutenant's commission. At the same time the 
Pennsylvania Committee of Safety considered the abroga- 
tion of the Penn charter and abolition of the Proprietary. 
In September, 1776, two months after the Declaration of 
Independence was signed, the Committee of Safety resolved 
itself into the " Supreme Executive Council," deposed 
John Penn, took control of the province of Pennsylvania, 
made it a State in the Revolutionary Confederation, and the 
rule of Penn and the Penns became a tradition. But though 
the visible form of Proprietary government disappeared, 
a good deal of its virus lingered. To this day it has not 
been wholly extirpated. 

The boundaries of the Pennsylvania territory covered 
by the original grant to William Penn in 1681 had never 
been definitively fixed until the Fort Stanwix treaty of 
1768, which gave to Pennsylvania the Susquehanna Valley 
as far north as the mouth of Towanda Creek and the land 
west that lay south of a line drawn from the head of Towan- 
da Creek to a point on the Alleghany River several miles 
above Fort Pitt. This delimitation gave the Proprietary 
under the original grant jurisdiction over about twenty 
million acres — or, say, thirty-one thousand square miles of 
land — of territory that has since become the richest in- 
dustrial State of the Union. 

When the Proprietary was finally abolished in 1779, the 
interest of the Penn family in the soil was vested in the 
State. The Act of 1779, however, appropriated £130,000 
to be paid out of the treasury to the heirs of William Penn 

362 




ARREST OF THE CONNECTICUT SETTLERS IX WYOMING. 
From a drawing by Howard Pyle. 



UNDER PENN'S DESCENDANTS 

in full of all claims and clamasies. It also secnrod to them 
all private estates, lands, or manors owned by them in fee 
simple at the date of the act. 

The State held the lands — or sold them to actual settlers 
— until 1789, when such as remained unsold were trans- 
ferred to the Federal Government as public lands. 

The books of the comptroller-general's office show that 
from 1780 to 1789 the State received from sales of the es- 
cheated or sequestrated lands of the Penn Proprietary the 
sum of £825,000 in round figures (say $4,225,000). 

In addition to the amount paid by the State of Penn- 
sylvania— £130,000 (say $650,000)— the Penn heirs made 
a claim for damages amounting to £945,000, under the Act 
of Parliament "to indemnify loyal subjects of his Britan- 
nic Majesty for losses suffered in the American War." 

The Penn heirs were all Tories — in common with most of 
the Quakers of Pennsylvania — and therefore entitled to the 
benefits of the act mentioned. Their claim was reviewed by 
a select committee of the House of Commons, who reported 
in favor of granting £500,000 to the Penn heirs, which was 
paid in consols at par. 

It thus appears that the heirs of William Penn by Han- 
nah Callowhill realized from the governments of Pennsyl- 
vania and Great Britain together £630,000, or, say, $3,- 
150,000 in money, besides securing their private estates in 
Pennsylvania. 

In conclusion we shall not attempt any general survey 
or anah'sis of the character of William Penn. If, with the 
facts wo have deployed before him, the reader is unable to 
form an estimate of his own, nothing within our power to 

363 



WILLIAM PENN 

say further could help him. But we are confident all will 
agree that William Penn, in every aspect of character and 
in every relation of life, was a good man. It is, we think, 
equally apparent that he was a great man. Sometimes he 
w^as a great statesman; at other times he was a great 
Quaker ; but he was never both at the same time. 



364 



INDEX 



A 



DOLF, GUSTAV, 1. 



American Philosophical Society, 29o. 
Annals of Oxford, 55. 
Annals, Watson 's, 355. 
Anne, Queen, 258 et seq. 
Aubrey, William, 256. 



B 



ISHOP OF LONDON, 112. 



Blackwell, Captain John, deputy-gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania, 224, 225. 

Blake, Admiral. Private Circular to 
Officers of Rank, 6, 10. 

Boundary-lines, of Penn's grant, 110; 
of Pennsylvania, difficulty of locating, 
253; definitely fixed, 1768, 361. 

Buel, John, 42, 45. 

Byng, Admiral, 8. 

Byrd, William, deputy-governor of 
Virginia, 124. 

Byrd Manuscripts, 124; extracts from, 
slandering Penn, 125. 

CALLOWHILL, HANNAH, second 
wife of Penn, 231; her character 

and influence, 232, 235. 
Calvin, John 59. 
Captain Pipe, Indian chief, 143. 
Charles II, 40, 41, 46, 78, 97. 
Charter, Penn's, provisions of, 120 et xeq; 

amended, 308. 
Chigwell Free Grammar-school, 8, 31. 
Church of England, 41, 87, 89, 90. 
Code of Discipline, 132. 
Colonial Records, 359. 
Colonies, population of, in 1703, 268. 
Colony of Pennsylvania, charter of, 

107, 112. 
Commissioners to colonies, 119, 123. 
Comte de Frontenac, 210. 



Conformity Act, 47. 

Constitution of West Jersey, 98. 

Conventicle Acts, 87, 185. 

Conversations of William of Orange, 
quotation from, concerning Quakers, 
187, 213. 

Council of Ten, 101. 

Croe.se, Gerard, author of Historia 
Quakeriana, 181, 206. 

Cromwell, Oliver, accession to power, 
6; mentioned, 8, 9, 10, 11; his des- 
potism, 46. 

Cromwell, Richard, 31, 39, 40. 

Croxton, Thomas, 22, 26. 

DE BUADE, COMTE DE FRON- 
TENAC, 210. 
De Castries, cruise and capture of Eng- 
lish vessels, 271. 
Delaware Indians, 142. 
Denny, William, 352. 
Dissenters, 42. 

Duke of York, 40, 41, 108, 179. 
Dutch colony, 92. 

TTIARL OF RANELAGH, 2,54. 

Earl of Romney, 216. 

Emigration to Pennsylvania, 118, 185. 
253, 286. 

Episcopal Church, its bigotry, 48; its 
cruelty, 87, 89, 90. 

Evans, John, deputy-governor of Penn- 
sylvania, 266; his success in the 
colony, 269, 270, 271; his removal, 
275; his character, 280; death, 284. 

FENWICK, .lOHN, 93, 94, 116, 144, 
165. 
Fenwick's islanti, 165. 



5(55 



WILLIAM PENN 



Fletcher, Benjamin, Governor of New 

York, 213, 214, 215. 
Ford, Philip, 316, 320. 
Forster, William E., vindication of 

Penn, 194. 
Fort Stanwix treaty. 361. 
Fox, George, his doctrines, 19, 34, 133, 

168, 170,214, 252 ei seq. 
Fox's Cotle of Church Discipline, 132. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 348. 
Free Society of Traders, organized by 

Penn, 133. 
"Friends," 26, 27. 
Frontenac, Comte fie, 210. 

ptOOKIN, COLONEL CHARLES, 

^-^ deputy-governor for Penn, 282 
et seq. 

Government by correspondence, 263. 

Grant of land to William Penn, bounda- 
ries of, 110, 

"Great Law," 121. 

TTAMILTON, ANDREW, appointed 
-*- deputy-governor by Penn, 257; 

his death, 266. 
Hamilton, James, 350, 356. 
Harcourt, Sir Simon, 318. 
Harvey, Thomas, 32, 58, 69, 70. 
Hazard's Annals of Pennsylvania, 109. 
Historia Quakeriana, 181, 207. 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 139. 
House of Commons, 186. 
Huguenots, 61. 

TMMIGRATION to Pennsylvania, 253, 

-J- 286. 

Indians, 141, 143, 145, 148; description 

of, by Penn, 152 et seq., 161. 
" Inner Light," 17. 
Ironsides, Ireton's, 23. 
Iroquois Indians, 161. 

TAMES II, DUKE OF YORK, 
^ Clarke's Life of, 107; accession to 

the throne, 179; not responsible for 

judicial murders, 191; his brief reign, 

199. 
Janney, Quaker historian, 225. 
Jasper, Margaret, mother of Penn, 5. 
Johnson, Sir William, 141; opinions of 

the Iroquois, 161. 
Journal of Travels, 55, 71. 



K 



EITH, GEORGE, 229, 230, 23L 



Keith, Sir William, successor of Charles 

Gookin, 289, 290, 291. 
King William III, his coalition against 

France and Spain, 249; his death, 258. 
Kirke, Percy, 190, 191. 
" Kirke's Lambs," 191. 

T EE, ARTHUR, 160. 

Literature, theological, during the early 

life of William Penn, 13. 
Lloyd, David, hostility to Penn, 243, 

263. 
Lloyd, Thomas, 223. 
Locke, John, 99. 
Loe, Thomas, 31, 32, 33, 34, 67. 
Logan, Deborah, 295, 296. 
Logan, James, representative of Penn, 

244, 263. 
Lord Baltimore, 116, 117, 146; claims 

all sovereignty south of the fortieth 

parallel, 164, 169; patent to, 177. 
Louis XIV, 200, 202, 208, 209, 210. 
Luther, Martin, 13, 15. 
Lutherans, 22. 

"A /TACAULAY, characterization of, 

-LVJ- 193. 

Manor of Williamstadt, 277, 279. 

Markham, Captain William, deputy- 
governor of Pennsylvania, 115, 116, 
117; selected site of Philadelphia, 
120, 228, 241. 

Maryland, settlement of, 268. 

Mason-Dixon line, 116, 253. 

"Merry Monarch," 46. 

Mompesson, Roger, appointed chief 
justice of Pennsylvania by Penn, 309. 

Morley, George, 49, 54. 

Morris, Colonel Robert Hunter, 352. 

Morris, Richard, 353. 

TVrrO CROSS, no crown, by Will- 
-L^ iam Penn, 78, 91. 
Non-conformists, 42. 
North American colonies, 210. 



/^LD elm-tree, 144. 
Old Lichfield, 23. 



366 



INDEX 



Oldiuixon, John, refers to Peiin's return 
to England iu 1684. 171 ; quoted. 194; 
his life of Queen Anue. 259. 

Orthodox Quakers, 229. 

TDEACE of Ryswick, 239. 

Pemberton MSS., 316. 

Penn Charter School, 229. 

Penn, Hannah, made executrix of 
Penn's private estate, 288, 340, 342; 
death, 343. 

Penn, John, 348, 349. 

Penn, Laetitia, daughter of William 
Penn, 255; her marriage to William 
.\ubrey, 256. 

Penn, ThomaS, originator of the 
"walking purchase," 348, 350. 

Penn, William, Jr., 267, 275. 

Penn, Sir William, early experience as a 
sailor, 5; promotion to rear-admiral, 
6; commander of fleet as vice-admiral, 
1654, 7; failure of expedition, and 
thrown into prison by Cromwell, 8; 
his release, 10, 12; declared for restora- 
tion of the Stuart dynasty, 40, 56, 57, 
62, 64, 65, 67; Life of, 77; his death, 
77. 

Penn, William, place of birth and en- 
vironment of his youth, 4 ; his charac- 
ter and predecessors, 5 ; early educa- 
tion at Chigwell school, 8, 12; his pre- 
cociousness, 12; influence of John 
Saltmarsh's, writings, 18; his first 
spiritual experience, 32; matricula- 
tion at Christ Church College, 35; 
under his father's displeasure, 53; 
leaves Oxford, 55; visit to Paris, 61; 
as student of law, 63; portrait of, 66; 
as Governor of Kinsale, 67 ; final 
conversion, 70; his Journal of Travels, 
71; letter to Earl of Orrery, 73; bi- 
ographies of, 76; his father's estate, 
78; Quaker preacher and founder of 
West Jersey, 83; as author, 83; his 
marriage, 85; trial at Old Bailey, 88; 
his travels in Europe, 94; prepares 
scheme of government for new colony, 
95; first appearance in politics, 102; 
petitions to King for grant in America, 
107; his instructions to commission- 
ers for settlement of colony, 119; his 
land system, 122; his detractors, 124; 

36 



his first year in Pennsylvania, 131; 
partiality for Quakers, 132; organizes 
Free Society of Traders, 133; his first 
voyage to the New World, 134; 
on the verge of insolvency, 135; 
founder of the .ship-building industry 
on the Delaware, 136; meeting with 
Lord Baltimore, 146; explores his 
domains, 148; his description of the 
Indians, 152 et seq.; described by a 
contemporary, 103; his letter to Duke 
of York, 166; returns to England, 
1684, 169; aversion to statistics, 170; 
at the court of James II, 175; 
reasons for his long absence from 
colony, 175; his memorial to the 
court, 177; visits Holland, 185; ground 
for Macaulay's charge against him, 
192; summoned before secret council 
for treasonable correspondence, 206; 
his arrest for conspiracy, 208; three 
years in seclusion, 219; letter to 
Thomas Lloyd describing his release, 
219; illness and death of his wife, 220; 
his instructions to Governor Black- 
well, 226, 227; second marriage, 231; 
visits Ireland, 1698, 232; returns to 
his province, 1699, 240; his house in 
Philadelphia, 242; residence at Penns- 
bury Manor, 244; evasive behavior 
toward the King, 250; councils with 
the Indians, 252; second visit to 
England, 1701, 257; financial em- 
barrassments, 263, 278; weakening of 
mental faculties, 283; his connection 
with the government of Pennsylvania 
ceases, 289; his last official act, 289; 
his last days, and letters to Logan, 
295; his career in England, 1702 to 
1712, 296; his diplomacy, 301; causes 
of his troubles, 304; imprisoned for 
debt, 319; farewell address, 329; his 
last letters and final illness, 335; his 
death, 341. 

Penn's charter signed, 110, 114; its pjro- 
visions for system of government, 
120; estimate of its value, 121 ; Penn's 
own views, 124; amended, 308. 

Penn's grant. 110. 165. 

Penn's treaty, 1,39, 141. 

Penns and Pennington, 33, 58. 

Pennsbury Manor, 138; description of, 
244. 



WILLIAM PENN 



Pennsylvania, origin of name, 111; 
charter of, 107, 112; in Penn's ab- 
sence, 219 et seq.; Gordon's History 
of, 223; under Penn's descendants, 
347; boundary-lines fixed, 361. 

Pennsylvania charter, 107. 

Pennsylvania colony, growing dissen- 
sions and confusion in Penn's absence, 
221. 

" Penn.sylvania Dutch," 189. 

Pennsylvania province, population in 
1704, 267. 

Pepys, Sir Samuel, Diary of, 41, 56, 62. 

Philadelphia, settlement of, 137; popu- 
lation in 1704, 267. 

Population of colonies, 1703, 268. 

Praise-God Barebones, 26. 

Preamble of Concessions, 97. 

Proprietary finally abolished, 361. 

Proprietary governor of Pennsylvania, 
319. 

Protector, the great, 4, 9, 39. 

Protestantism in northern Europe and 
England, 60. 

Proud's History of Pennsylvania, 137. 

Puritan creed, 23, 25. 

Puritans, 22, 24, 45, 46, 47, 61. 

/QUAKER MARRIAGES, 47. 

Quakers, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 45, 73, 
87, 95, 103; as non-combatants, 113, 
118, 132; their commerce with In- 
dians, 140,144, 179, 214, 225; dre.s8 
of. 233, 265; tendency toward liberal- 
ism, 267, 269; their panic and flight 
from Philadelphia, 272, 277, 278, 360. 

Quaker calendar, 219. 

Queen Anne's War, 101; her friendship 
for Penn, 258, 259, 260. 

Queen Mary, 204, 205, 208. 

TDESTORATION, its effect upon the 
-L^ spiritual conditions in England, 

41. 
Revivals, psychological effects, 72. 
Roundheads, 24. 

SALTMARSH, JOHN, writings of, 
13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. 
Selected writings, 323. 
Shanningarry, 67. 



Shelley, Percy Bysshc, 15, 16. 
Ship-building in Philadelphia, beginning 

of, 147. 
Sidney, Algernon, 99, 101, 102, 113. 
Sign of the Blue Anchor, 137. 
Smith, Joseph, 65. 
Society of Friends, 19, 259. 
Sparkles of Glory, 15, 18, 28, 31. 
Springett, Gulielma Maria, wife of 

William Penn, 85; her death, 220. 
Standish, Myles, 141, 144. 
Story, John, 132. 
Story, Thomas, journal of, 338. 
Stuyvesant, Peter, 177. 



T 



ANGIER LAMBS, 190. 



Ten Eyck, Cornelius, 211. 

"The Great Law," 146. 

Theology in the seventeenth century, 

14, 59. 
"Treaty Elm," picture of, by Benjamin 

West, 139. 
Trenchard, John, 220. 

TTNDER the Restoration, 39. 
TTAN ALSTYNE, CAPTAIN BA- 



V 



RENT, 211. 



Vane, Sir Harry, 11. 
Venables, General, 7. 
Virginia Historical Society, 124. 
Virginia, map of, 165; settlement of, 
268. 

"\TTANSTEAD, 8. 

War of Spanish .succession, 268. 

Watson's Annals, 355. 

Webb, Maria, 33. 

Welcome,-^' oy age of, 136. 

Werden, Sir John, agent of Duke of 
York, 108. 

West Indian expedition, 39. 

West Jersey Colony, constitution of, 98. 

White settlers, primitive, Penn's de- 
scription of, 162. 

Wilkinson, John, 132. 

William and Mary, 186, 188, 204 et seq. 

William of Orange, 199; how his reign 
affected Penn's interests, 204, 206 et 
seq., 227, 233. 

Wood, Anthony, Annals of Oxford 56. 



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